Investigative reporter Sharly Atkisson, who uncovered key details of Operation Fast and Furious and the Benghazi scandal, now reports at the Daily Signal that Covered California, the Obamacare health care exchange established by the State of California, is not the success story that boosters claim, but is rather rife with fraud, chaos, and failure.
According to her sources, including whistleblower–and former Obamacare supporter–Aiden Hill, Covered California is a “monster.”
Among the allegations in part one of Atkisson’s report:
- Covered California’s launch and operations are characterized by “gross incompetence and mismanagement”
- Enrollment for 2015 is up only 7,098–only 1% of the original goal of a 500,000-patient increase
- 35 percent of Covered California’s original customers have since dropped out of the program
- Call centers received more than twice the number of help calls on the first day of operation
- Executive director Peter Lee “lied” about enrollments in the first month, claiming 30,000 when only 4,000 enrolled
California was designed as the flagship for the Obamacare policy, and both state and federal policymakers have treated its program as a model for Obamacare as a whole. In the midst of a chaotic federal rollout in the fall of 2013, commentators called Covered California “the best hope of salvaging the national health care mess known as Obamacare.”
That was hype then, and appears even more so today after Atkisson’s first report.
Part two of her investigation will be published Apr. 21.