One of the edited videos shows an Urban League navigator trainee telling an applicant not to reveal cash income on his health plan application that he said he did not declare on his tax returns. In a second video, a woman whom the Urban League has reportedly identified as a part-time receptionist tells the man not to divulge that he is a smoker because his premium would be higher as a result.
News of the video quickly made for political fodder. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (D-Texas), a sharp critic of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, called for the navigator program to be halted in speech given on the Senate floor Wednesday.
“We've learned that navigators, including those in my home state of Texas, were actively encouraging people to break the law as a process of signing up for the Obamacare exchanges,” Cornyn said. “It is simply astounding that the administration is urging the American people to give their Social Security numbers and sensitive personal information to people who have not been properly vetted. We need to also dismantle the navigators program before it unleashes a wave of fraud and corruption.”
Nearly $11 million in federal funding has gone to organizations in Texas to train navigators to help guide the uninsured through the enrollment process, with the Urban League receiving close to $400,000.
Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe is best known of his undercover videos that targeted the political action group ACORN, which has since been disbanded. In March, O'Keefe reportedly settled a lawsuit for $100,000 that was filed against by a former ACORN employee, who was featured in one of his undercover videos in 2009.
In a written statement, the Urban League responded to the release of the video saying that it was “immediate steps to address the actions of the identified employees” and that it was in the process of further investigating the matter.
Follow Steven Ross Johnson on Twitter: @MHSjohnson
