Thread: The inevitability of ObamaCare for illegal aliens

One News Now
Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, March 05, 2014

This wasn't a one-time computer meltdown. Because Oregon's health insurance exchange website has been offline and its software architects under investigation for possible fraud, the Oregon ObamaCare drones have been processing each and every application manually.

That means nearly 4,000 illegal alien applications with "inaccurate" data somehow passed through government hands and somehow ended up getting routed through as new enrollees with ObamaCare-approved full-service healthcare.

The inevitability of ObamaCare for illegal aliens

We all saw it coming. Officials in Oregon have confessed that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants had been "accidentally" steered from the state's low-income Medicaid program and instead were enrolled in ObamaCare in violation of the law. Oopsie.

You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. When government expands entitlements, illegal aliens always end up with a piece of the pie. ObamaCare promoters relented to GOP pressure to include an illegal alien ban on eligibility and vowed endlessly that no benefits would go to the "undocumented." But denial isn't just a river in Egypt. It's the Obama way.

In Oregon this week, officials confessed that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants had been "accidentally" steered from the state's low-income Medicaid program and instead were enrolled in ObamaCare in violation of the law. Oopsie. The Oregonian newspaper's Nick Budnick reported that the health bureaucrats "discovered the problem several weeks ago and are correcting it." Get in line. The beleaguered Cover Oregon health insurance exchange has been riddled with ongoing problems, errors and glitches since last October that have yet to be fixed.

Take note: This wasn't a one-time computer meltdown. Because Oregon's health insurance exchange website has been offline and its software architects under investigation for possible fraud, the Oregon ObamaCare drones have been processing each and every application manually. That means nearly 4,000 illegal alien applications with "inaccurate" data somehow passed through government hands and somehow ended up getting routed through as new enrollees with ObamaCare-approved full-service healthcare.

How many ObamaCare services did these nearly 4,000 illegal aliens avail themselves of, and at what cost?

Does anyone believe the same incompetent boobs who enrolled them will be able to track down the nearly 4,000 illegal alien beneficiaries, "correct" the "errors" and ensure that it doesn't happen again?

What a slap in the face to the millions of law-abiding Americans who have lost their healthcare coverage and work hours thanks to Democratic-sponsored federal healthcare regulatory burdens and mandate costs.

One Oregon ObamaCare manager defended the unlawful illegal alien enrollment by explaining: "We were just getting people into the services." And there's the rub. The imperative of these government social engineers is to herd as many "clients" into taxpayer-subsidized programs as possible. Just last week, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson publicized an open letter to families with illegal alien relatives promising that no one would be deported for seeking ObamaCare services.

"No one in America who is eligible should be afraid to apply for health coverage because they have a family with mixed status," Johnson assured. And in another sign of how the White House is still planning for mass illegal alien amnesty, Johnson also made clear: "Enrolling in health coverage ... will not prevent your loved ones who are undocumented from getting a green card in the future or who do not yet have a green card at risk."

As always, California Democrats are at the forefront of busting open ObamaCare for the illegal alien population. Earlier this month, Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara introduced a bill to extend health benefits and a special online marketplace to one million illegals under an ObamaCare-style program subsidized by state taxpayer dollars.

In case you forgot, President Obama had already paved the path for illegal alien ObamaCare when he signed the massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) in 2009. As I've reported previously, the law loosened eligibility requirements for legal immigrants and their children by watering down document and evidentiary standards -- making it easy for individuals to use fake Social Security cards to apply for benefits with little to no chance of getting caught. In addition, Obama's S-CHIP expansion revoked Medicaid application time limits that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law.

Open-borders activists saw those provisions as first steps toward universal health coverage for illegals. They see America as the medical welcome mat to the world. Over the past year, they've ratcheted up public protests demanding free organ transplants for illegal alien patients. In Chicago last fall, they marched on a hospital with caskets and posters demanding scarce organs. One illegal alien blasted authorities for putting "paper over our lives." In California, illegal alien transplant patients count on federal incompetence and lax enforcement to abet them, because if they notify the state that DHS "is aware of their presence and does not plan to deport them," they are eligible for full-blown Medi-Cal coverage, according to the state.

Now, ObamaCare peddlers from Oregon to New York and all points in between are rushing to sign up new "customers" in advance of the March 31 open enrollment deadline. How many more thousands of illegal aliens will be roped into the system? Remember: In the lexicon of the left, "accidental" is just another word for inevitable entitlement creep.

http://onenewsnow.com/perspectives/m...illegal-aliens

Oregon Live
By Nick Budnick
March 01, 20

Nearly 4,000 applicants for a state program that provides undocumented immigrants with pregnancy services were instead enrolled in full Oregon Health Plan coverage.

Cover Oregon health insurance exchange fiasco spawns problems for low-income Oregonians' health plan

Nearly 4,000 applicants for a state program that provides undocumented immigrants with pregnancy services were instead enrolled in full Oregon Health Plan coverage, contrary to federal law, thanks to problems with the Cover Oregon health insurance exchange.

State officials say they discovered the problem several weeks ago and are correcting it.

The pregnancy program goof, however, is just one of many little-known problems that Oregon Health Plan members, providers, care groups and state officials have wrestled with as Oregon’s system for enrolling people undergoes chaotic change.

It’s the flip side of the Cover Oregon debacle, where much of the attention has focused on the travails of people applying for private or commercial insurance.

Two thirds of Cover Oregon’s enrollments -- more than 70,000 -- have gone into the low-income Oregon Health Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid. Combined with other enrollments since Oct. 1, OHP membership has swelled by more than 200,000, or about a third -- a favorite talking point of state officials.

Many of those enrollments, however, have not gone smoothly:

• Thousands of OHP enrollees were labeled as individuals rather than family members, meaning some families were split between care organizations – creating needless hassles for parents seeking care.
• For months, the state grappled with inaccurate Medicaid coding, crucial to securing accurate federal matching funds.
• Department of Human Services workers who used to help clients afflicted by erroneous information now face difficulties doing so because their responsibilities have been transferred to Cover Oregon.

Some of the problems with OHP enrollments are due to limitations with the Cover Oregon exchange information technology. Others stem from flaws in the many “workaround” band-aid systems set up to patch for problems with the exchange. Officials say they are working through these issues slowly and attribute them to standard growing pains.

“It never works perfectly the first time out,” said Kathleen Paul, an Oregon Health Authority manager who has worked on the Cover Oregon information-technology project.

The Cover Oregon health insurance exchange was designed to communicate electronically with the Oregon Health Authority, which has a system for tracking Oregon Health Plan members.

That interface failed to work, however, and in late November Cover Oregon set up a backup system by which new OHP enrollee information is sent to the Oregon Health Authority, where state workers upload the data manually.

The information was sent over incorrectly and in an incomplete fashion until a few weeks ago, Paul said Friday. That resulted in 3,800 applicants for the Citizen/Alien-Waived Emergent Medical program receiving full OHP benefits instead. The program is set up for immigrants who are either undocumented or haven’t met the residency requirement for Medicaid.

“We were just getting people into the services,” Paul said, adding that the state will finish fixing the problem in the coming week.

Not only that, but Cover Oregon sent over names of thousands of Oregon Health Plan enrollees as individuals, rather than labeling them properly as families. In some cases this has caused some family members to be assigned to one care organization and provider group while others are assigned to a completely different one.

Paul says that problem is being fixed manually on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s been a mess for us,” said Jeff Heatherington, CEO of Family Care, Inc., one of the organizations that cares for Oregon Health Plan members in the Portland area. “It makes it very difficult for us to tie families together in our database. We can’t identify them, so we have to go through and set up a new data structure internally and then match addresses -- all of which have been hand-entered so they don’t necessarily match.”

Jan Buffa, CEO of the Willamette Valley Providers Health Authority, an OHP provider organization based in Salem, says her group has seen fewer problems, but has been perturbed by mysterious fluctuations in its member rolls maintained by the Oregon Health Authority.

“We had a few hundred people disappear off of our enrollment, and (OHA) couldn’t explain it,” she said. “We’ve been waiting patiently for their explanation.”

Another problem: Oregon Health Authority workers have had to send out federally required notices to OHP members by hand, rather than in the automated way originally intended.

Many of the problems faced by OHP clients filter down to the caseworkers and eligibility specialists who staff the offices of the Department of Human Services, which used to handle enrollment before the exchange came along.

There, workers used to be able to fix problems such as address changes or incorrect information. But now, under the new system, they are largely denied the ability to change files to correct the many problems clients are reporting.

“It’s a very confusing and trying time right now,” said Jan Mautz, an eligibility analyst for the Oregon Health Authority, who says the situation was “horrendous” but is improving. She spoke through the Service Employees International Union, which represents Mautz and other caseworkers. “We're trying our best to get people through the broken system. The systems don’t talk to each other.”

Lawmakers recently received an anonymous letter from state employees detailing a dozen such problems affecting tens of thousands of enrollees, including that the new IT system used by the Oregon Health Authority for OHP doesn’t properly calculate the code used to determine federal matching funds. “Medicaid has suffered an assault (and) is bleeding profusely,” the letter said. Paul says there have been problems with the Medicaid code cited, but they’ve been recently fixed and stemmed not from the technology, but how the system was programmed. She said the letter reflects a misunderstanding of many of the issues, and many of the problems have been resolved.

“Things are different than they used to be, and that is presenting challenges for staff,” she said.

The agency is slowly making progress, officials stressed. For instance, a backlog of 30,000 applications and change orders that existed in late January has been whittled down to about half that figure.

Donald White, a spokesman for the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said he couldn’t comment on the allegations made by the anonymous state employees.

“Until we have the results of an investigation, or at least a request for an investigation, there’s not much that I could actually say,” White said. “To the degree that there is HHS grant money involved, of course the Office of the Inspector General is very interested in pursuing the facts of this matter.”

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/ind...surance_1.html

Obama Promises Illegals: Obamacare Sign Up Info Won't Be Used for Deportation