Obama Administration Used Confidential Taxpayer Information to Push Obamacare – IOTW Report

Obama Administration Used Confidential Taxpayer Information to Push Obamacare

Breitbart: Judicial Watch uncovered yet another Obama IRS scandal – and one that includes the massive Health and Human Services (HHS) running Obamacare AND the Obama White House directly!

We received two productions of documents, 77 pages and 108 pages, from the IRS revealing that the Obama IRS coordinated with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Obama White House Behavioral Sciences “Team” in a $5 million program to pressure Americans to sign up for Obamacare.

The documents also contain inter-agency agreements between the IRS and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) devised to circumvent potential legal prohibitions on unauthorized disclosure or inspection of taxpayer information collected by the IRS.

The documents were produced in Judicial Watch Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:17-cv-00615). They were produced under court order in our April 2017 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS and HHS, which we filed after the agencies failed to respond to November 2016 FOIA requests for:

  • All records concerning IRS efforts to reach out to individuals who either claimed an exemption or paid a penalty for failing to purchase mandatory health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Such records include, but are not limited to, communications, policies, and procedures pursuant to such efforts;
  • Samples of any letters, notices or other materials prepared and/or sent to taxpayers encouraging the purchase of mandatory health insurance; and
  • Any records regarding cooperation between IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services or any other government entity, whether state or federal, regarding efforts to reach out to individuals who have not purchased mandatory health insurance. Such records, include, but are not limited to, communications, agreements, memoranda of understanding, and any other inter-agency communications. Of special interest are any such records regarding the sharing of protected taxpayer information.

In September 2016, IRS Director of Individual Taxation Janet McCubbin writes to several of her colleagues:

Attached are drafts of the letters that IRS will send to selected taxpayers who paid a penalty for failure to have coverage or who claimed an exemption form the coverage requirement for tax year 2015 … As you know, we are planning to send several different versions of the letter to see which types of messages work best.

***

These letters have been drafted with input from the White House Behavioral Sciences Team and CMS, and have been approved by CMS. And IRS staff provided a lot of assistance on the PDF.

The White House Behavioral Sciences Team was established in 2015 by an Obama Executive Order directing federal agencies to adopt research about how people make decisions into policy development.

MORE

10 Comments on Obama Administration Used Confidential Taxpayer Information to Push Obamacare

  1. And as always, Judicial Watch
    does a great job in breaching
    the criminal (DC Omerta) silence.
    But, in the end, no one is
    prosecuted, no one goes to jail
    and there are job upgrades and
    bonuses all around for the perps.

  2. Why spend energy digging out these abuses? Not a darn thing will be done about it.
    Few will be fired, if fired they will still retain their full pension and benefits. I challenge ya to list someone held to account for their misdeeds & abuse of power who received any real punishment (jail time / loss of income) for what they did.

  3. I guess our only hope is to give Judicial Watch prosecutorial power. It clear our department of justice is incapable of enforcing the law. Jeff Sessions is an unbelievable disappointment!

  4. OK, I guess there’s always a few exceptions to the general trend. So few in fact it leaves one skeptical about all cases.

    The score between those who Got Away With It and the group that Didn’t Get Away With It – favors the first group by a wide wide margin.

Comments are closed.