SEBELIUS: announced last week $150 million in state grants to fund Obamacare outreach workers.
By Watchdog Staff
BOISE, Idaho ? President Barack Obama, long criticized for his poor handling of the economy, announced last week an initiative that will create hundreds of jobs nationwide.
Too bad those jobs will be tasked with pushing thousands of Americans onto government-run health-care programs like Medicaid, the Children?s Health Insurance Program?and Medicare.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced just days ago that her department will send $150 million in grants to community health centers in all 50 states to spread information about the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
?Investing in health centers means that people in neighborhoods and towns across the country have one more resource to help them understand their insurance options and enroll in affordable coverage,? Sebelius said in a press release.
In all, 1,159 health centers will hire at least 2,900 outreach specialists using the federal cash. The feds see the effort as another avenue to increase participation in its initiatives as the country moves toward Oct. 1, 2013, when Americans can begin insurance enrollment through exchanges, online marketplaces through which billions in federal subsidies will flow each year.
Ben Domench of the conservative Heartland Institute, longtime critics of Obama?s health reform law, says the money only means more bureaucracy and overhead costs.
?There are already thousands of employees focused on enrolling people in Medicaid and CHIP at these health centers, but HHS wants to double the number, because they understand that the more people they shove into this unsustainable program, the harder it will be to repeal,? Domenech told Watchdog.org last week.
Domenech and others allege that the workers hired will act as public relations specialists with the sole intent of propping up Obamacare.
?They?re going to use this money to hire Obamacare promoters, who will push people who come through their doors to sign up for taxpayer-subsidized coverage, whether through?Medicaid, the?CHIP?or the (private insurance) exchanges,? he told?Watchdog.org.
?They?ll also coordinate with local groups and other outlets?? community centers, libraries, churches and even county fairs?? to make sure they?ve got someone there promoting Obamacare on the taxpayer dime.?
Betsy Seglem of Glacier Community Health in tiny Cut Bank, Mont., confirms that the workers hired will shepherd the uninsured to government health programs. ?We?re trying to get health insurance for everyone,? she said Monday.
Glacier Community Health will receive just more than $66,000 from HHS.
Montana will take in $1.47 million through the grants, enough to hire 27 workers. Seglem said the grants will cover workers? salaries for a year.
She rejected criticism that workers will provide positive spin for Obama around communities, insisting that the point is merely to sign people up for health coverage.
FRANKO: The Kansas Policy Institute vice president said the money is for Obamacare hucksters.
James Franko, vice president of the Kansas Policy Institute, echoed Domenech?s assessment that the positions are more spin doctors than anything.
?It seems a little odd that we?re funding what amounts to a marketing push,? said Franko. ?If the law was really that good and people really wanted to sign up for it, then they would do it without getting hitched on some level by government-paid bureaucrats.?
Kansas? 15 community health clinics will share $1.6 million for 32 new jobs around the state. Most of those will come in the densely populated eastern portion of the state.
?Government can?t create jobs. That money had to come from somewhere,? Franko said. ?Taxpayers are on the hook for that. That?s money that?s otherwise out of the economy.
Community health centers play a key role in Obamacare and might seemingly act as a perfect point for signing up hundreds of thousands of Americans for health programs. In 2012, the centers, which usually treat those without health insurance, served more than 21 million people.
The ACA, which grows less affordable with each passing day, allocated more than $11 billion over a five-year period to strengthen the health clinics.
Contact Dustin Hurst at ?Dustin@Watchdog.org
Kansas Watchdog?s Travis Perry and Watchdog?s Kenric Ward contributed to this report.?
The post Obama creates jobs to push Americans into his health care plan appeared first on Watchdog.org.
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