The administration has
announced grants totaling $67 million to 105 groups, organizations that will be hiring "navigators" for Obamacare in the 34 states in which the federal government is setting up health insurance exchanges.
The grants announced Thursday will go to 105 organizations, including community groups, health care providers, business groups and a handful of Planned Parenthood affiliates. The program, which got an extra $13 million from the health law prevention fund, is for those states that refused to set up their own health insurance exchanges, and the federal government is stepping in. [...]
The grants HHS announced Thursday varied. Texas and Florida — two states that the administration has singled out as key to the law’s success — will receive about $10.9 million and $7.9 million, respectively. The single biggest grant — approximately $5.9 million — went to the United Way of Metropolitan Tarrant County, which serves the Fort Worth and Arlington areas of Texas. The group says it plans to work across the state, according to HHS.
Planned Parenthood is getting grants? Get ready for more right-wing hyperventilation about Obamacare paying for abortions.
And, of course, there's more. In at least 19 of these Republican states, where the grants are going, lawmakers have seen another opportunity for sabotage. They don't think people should have help getting affordable health insurance and they also apparently think the would-be navigators shouldn't have jobs. They've enacted restrictions and extra requirements for navigator training and licensing and to make the job as difficult as possible by restricting what the navigators can tell the people they're helping.
I'd say it was unbelievable, but it's not. The entire political reason for being of the Republican Party right now is focused on keeping millions of people uninsured.