Who knew what? And when did they know it?
These are two questions every investigative journalist asks when digging into a scandal. The ‘when’ piece of the puzzle can be especially damaging. If someone knows of wrongdoing long before speaking up, then they look like even more of a jackhole than if they’d just fessed up sooner.
This is exactly the trap that officials of Connect for Health Colorado have fallen into. Apparently, they knew about a glitch in the healthcare exchange system that left thousands of people uninsured months before the glitch was made public by 9News and months before the dysfunctional agency started working to fix the error.
Now, thanks to overpaid bureaucrats at the exchange who thought they could cover this up, close to 5,400 Coloradans who thought they had health insurance don’t.
Kudos to 9News reporter Brandon Rittiman for a job well done exposing this appalling negligence. Rittiman’s colleague, Kyle Clark, further sums up why this is a problem when he observes:
“I’m curious what other issues they know of that they don’t think will be big deals, and therefore, they aren’t going to tell people about.”
Us too, Kyle Clark. Us too.
This story is worth watching and sharing with anyone who might be affected: