Conservative group sues HHS regarding waivers

A conservative advocacy organization has filed suit against HHS, alleging the agency has failed to comply with its requests for information about how HHS decides to grant waivers from last year's health reform law.

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies—commonly known as Crossroads GPS—is a not-for-profit group that promotes limited government and for which Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is an informal advisor. In January, the law firm representing Crossroads GPS in the lawsuit sent a Freedom of Information Act request to HHS that sought access to “any and all memoranda, guidance, directives, instructions and other documents—whether electronic or written and whether distributed internally or externally” related to the criteria HHS used in granting and denying applications for waivers from the annual limit requirements in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to court documents in the suit.

Earlier this month, the group faxed a letter to the CMS, asking for an immediate response to its original request of HHS. In the suit, Crossroads GPS is requesting the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declare HHS' failure to respond as unlawful and also order the agency to search for and produce the records related to the group's January inquiry.

In a statement, Steven Law, president of Crossroads GPS said the waiver program has “the appearance, if not the reality, of favoritism to political cronies,” and that the administration needs “to come clean” on how they decide who is granted a waiver.

Richard Sorian, assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS, said in a statement that the agency has posted the regulation, criteria, waiver application, bulletins, fact sheets and list of approved applicants on CMS' website. The agency could not comment on the Crossroads GPS suit because it is pending litigation, Sorian added.

HHS has granted more than 1,000 waivers from the law's regulations on health plan annual benefit limits, which was the topic of a House health subcommittee hearing earlier this month. Hearing witness Steve Larsen, deputy administrator and director of CMS' center for consumer information and insurance oversight, said his office had approved 94% of the waiver applications as of late February.