Inspector General To Review Pullback Of HealthCare.gov Ads

FILE - This March 1, 2014 file photo shows part of the website for HealthCare.gov, seen in Washington. President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas. States that fully embraced the law... FILE - This March 1, 2014 file photo shows part of the website for HealthCare.gov, seen in Washington. President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas. States that fully embraced the law’s coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the share of their residents who remain uninsured, according to an extensive new poll released Tuesday. States whose leaders still object to “Obamacare” are seeing much less change. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, cumulatively based on tens of thousands of interviews, found a drop of 4 percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states that adopted the law’s Medicaid expansion and either built or helped run their own online insurance markets. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File) MORE LESS
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal inspector general has launched an inquiry into the Trump administration’s decision to pull back advertising for HealthCare.gov in the closing stretch of this year’s sign-up season.

Democrats had called the surprise move “sabotage.” The Trump administration said the ads were a waste of taxpayer dollars.

In a letter to Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general’s office said it has begun a “fact-finding review” of the administration’s actions, including the effect on enrollment.

About 12.2 million people have signed up for coverage this year through HealthCare.gov and state insurance markets, short of earlier projections by the Obama administration, but still considered respectable by independent analysts.

Murray and Warren had asked the inspector general’s office to investigate.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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