National Review

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James O’Keefe, the guerrilla videographer who helped bring down ACORN (the “community organizing” group that Barack Obama worked for as a lawyer and trainer) and got NPR’s president fired, is back.

This time, his undercover investigators focused on Obamacare’s “navigators,” the nearly 50,000 people who, in the words of the Department of Health and Human Services, “will serve as an in-person resource for Americans who want additional assistance in shopping for and enrolling in plans” on the Obamacare exchanges (at least when they’re finally working). The total value of grants doled out for nonprofits and community organizations to hire navigators has topped $67 million nationwide, and some of the money is going to a group run by ACORN’s highly controversial founder.

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“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” one navigator advises an investigator for O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, who tells the worker he sometimes smokes. “Don’t tell them that. Don’t tell ’em.”

The investigator then poses as a low-income worker at a university who has unreported cash income on the side, worrying about how that might affect his premium subsidies. That’s no problem for a navigator, who says, “Don’t get yourself in trouble by declaring it now.”

“Yeah, it didn’t happen,” another navigator says. One more chimes in: “Never report it.”

Records show that the National Urban League was paid $376,000 by the federal government for its Obamacare outreach in Texas.

O’Keefe’s cameras then visit Enroll America, a nationwide nonprofit group that has launched a multi-state grassroots campaign to help millions of Americans sign up for health coverage. Daniel Clayton of Enroll America says the group is “purely nonprofit. It’s not partisan, non-political.” But when Brian Pendleton of Enroll America is introduced at a speaking engagement, Enroll America is described as “the official group for the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”

Enroll America, O’Keefe reports, appears to be sharing data and working directly with an explicitly political group called Battleground Texas, activities that he notes “are prohibited unless certain conditions are met.” Adrian Bell, the regional field director for Battleground Texas, proudly notes the group was “started by President Obama’s national field director” and is “dedicated to turning Texas blue.”

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HHS opened the door to large-scale fraud by providing funding for tens of thousands of “navigators”—people who are supposed to persuade the uninsured to apply for coverage and then assist them in the application process. Instead of hiring well-screened, well-trained, and well-supervised workers, HHS decided to build political support for the Affordable Care Act by pouring money into supportive organizations so they could launch poorly trained workers into their communities without obtaining criminal background checks or creating systems for monitoring their activities.

As a practical matter, these navigators are unaccountable, and yet they will be asking people for Social Security numbers and other sensitive information. It will not take long for navigators to become predators, and HHS has no plan to deal with the new breed of predators it is creating. The somnolent HHS inspector general has been silent about this scheme that will inflict widespread fraud and identity theft on vulnerable Americans.

Finally, we should all remember that the Minnesota exchange illegally disclosed the Social Security numbers of 2,400 of its state’s citizens 18 days before its exchange opened for business. With HHS’s convoluted patchwork of contractors, including the data centers of “the cloud,” tens of thousands of people have now gained access to our personal data.

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The Urban League of Greater Dallas fired one person and suspended three others after a video from a conservative activist reportedly showed the workers encouraging health care applicants to lie.

An edited video was released Monday that seemingly shows so-called health care Navigators encouraging people to lie on forms signing up for health care to get better rates.

The video was released by Project Veritas, which was started by conservative activist James O'Keefe. O'Keefe gained notoriety for videos in 2009 that eventually brought down ACORN and was also arrested in 2010 for attempting to bug the phones in the office of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu for a different project.

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So anybody buy into this bilge?

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The Urban League said in a statement on Tuesday it "does not condone, nor would we ever sanction, misleading the public or any individual who seeks our assistance about any issue, and particularly in this case, an issue as critical as health care."

The Urban League said the person fired was a "part-time receptionist trainee" who was not authorized to speak on behalf of The Urban League or act as a Navigator and said it supports decertifying three "Navigators-in-training" in the video.

The Urban League also called for the unedited video of the incidents to be released. It said the undercover applicants were told the people they were speaking to were Navigators-in-training and "the full context of these comments is not reflected in the video."

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http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/23950361/o...alth-care-video

This is but one "navigator" at one office in one city. This thing is fertile ground for fraud of all kinds.

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So anybody buy into this bilge?

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No.

They only fired this person and act outraged because they got caught. End of Story.