Obamacare Numbers WERE Cooked by the Feds…

By Nic Horton, Jonathan Ingram and Josh Archambault— Mr. Horton is a Policy Impact Specialist, Mr. Ingram is Research Director, and Mr. Archambault a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

As we have written before, Arkansas’ “Private Option” ObamaCare Medicaid expansion has been a disaster for taxpayers, patients and politicians alike. Costs have run over budget every single month since the program’s launch. The Medicaid director who spearheaded the program abruptly resigned to “pursue other opportunities.” The program’s chief legislative architect, a three-term Republican state representative, lost his primary for an open Senate seat to a political newcomer, despite a significant fundraising advantage. And it’s a disaster for patients as well: the ObamaCare expansion plan is already prioritizing coverage for able-bodied adults over care for truly needy patients like Chloe Jones.

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News is so bad that Governor Beebe’s office is secretly trying to silence negative press about this ObamaCare experiment. And when that didn’t work, he prematurely leaked incomplete and misleading information. Now, the news for Arkansas – and indeed taxpayers everywhere – is getting even worse.

In August, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the findings of an internal audit conducted on Arkansas’ ObamaCare expansion.

Its conclusion?

The Obama administration violated its own budget neutrality protocols, at a cost of $778 million to federal taxpayers.

The Administration ignored the advice of its own actuaries who questioned the program’s costs. In addition, internal e-mails reveal that state officials knew the expansion would prove costly and unpredictable, but pushed forward anyway. Now Private Option costs are exploding and taxpayers everywhere are on the hook


http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot...ed-the-books-to-expand-obamacare-in-arkansas/