Sen. Mark Udall

As first reported by Todd Shepherd at Complete Colorado, liberal U.S. Senator Mark Udall and his staff pressured the Colorado Division of Insurance to revise the number of Coloradans whose insurance policies were canceled as a result of Obamacare.  From Shepherd’s report:

“At the height of controversy surrounding President Obama’s promises on the federal health care overhaul, U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s office worked assiduously to revise press accounts that 249,000 Coloradans received health care cancellation notices. Because the 249,000 figure was produced inside the Colorado Division of Insurance, Udall’s office lobbied that agency to revise the figure, or revise their definition of what qualified as a cancellation.”

According to an email uncovered by Shepherd, Jo Donlin, the director of external affairs with the Department of Regulatory Agencies’ Division of Insurance told colleagues on November 14th:

“Sen. Udall says our numbers were wrong. They are not wrong. Cancellation notices affected 249,199 people. They want to trash our numbers. I’m holding strong while we get more details. Many have already done early renewals. Regardless, they received cancellation notices.”

After Donlin provided an explanation of the numbers (which were accurate) the next day, instead of backing down, Sen. Udall sent his deputy chief of staff to bully the Division of Insurance.  Donlin characterized the phone call as “very hostile”.

On December 9th, nearly a month after this treacherous conversation, the liberal Public Policy Polling reported that Udall’s “deserves re-election” numbers had plummeted 14 points since August.  Udall knew that this revelation would crush his re-election effort, especially since he told Coloradans that if they liked their insurance, they could keep their insurance, which was the “Lie of the Year”, according to the nonpartisan Politifact.  The Republican National Committee then piled on by calling Udall out specifically for the lie.

Of course, any hiccups with Obamacare should cause concern for Udall.  The Wall Street Journal identified Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Udall as one of 12 in the Senate who cast the deciding vote on Obamacare.

Nonetheless, Udall learned his “bully them until they change the numbers to our liking” tactics from the best.  Just this week, it was revealed that President Obama asked a contractor to fudge numbers about the jobs impact that his new coal regulations would have.  When the contractor refused, the contract was terminated.  Too bad Udall can’t terminate the Division of Insurance for not reporting his preferred take.

We can’t wait to hear what kind of excuse Team Udall has for this one. Allison Sherry, are you busy writing the clean-up, “Udall is an NSA Watchdog” story that distracts from this yet?