The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been sued by a PAC affiliated with Karl Rove
over temporary waivers that can be issued this year to give employers more time to implement the recently passed health-care overhaul:Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) says the suit was prompted by the department's failure to respond to a Jan. 7 request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
The organization is seeking "any and all memoranda, guidance, directives, instructions and other documents … relating to the criteria to be applied by HHS in deciding whether to grant or deny applications for [a] waiver."
The waivers have turned into a major political headache for the administration, even though they're only temporary exemptions from the law's $750,000 minimum annual cap on benefits for 2011.
The administration has released multiple guidance documents detailing the process and revealing who got the waivers, but Republicans have been eager to make political hay of the process; they argue the more than 1,000 waivers granted so far are being used to reward political allies or are proof the law is fatally flawed.
