Tag: hospitals

Obamacare: Gruber, Graft, and Money-Grubbing Weasels

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

AFBranco Obamacare 11182014Remember when we found out in the 1980s that the Department of Defense had supposedly been buying $500 hammers and $600 toilet seats?

They were pikers.

FoxNews.com has the story…

“My job was just to see if the numbers added up,” Jonathan Gruber, the controversial architect of ObamaCare, told PBS two years ago.

And add up the numbers he did – at least in terms of Gruber’s consulting fees. A Fox News review of state and federal websites, as well as published reports, finds the MIT economist and his firm have secured millions in federal and state contracts stretching back over the last fifteen years.

Most famously, the Department of Health and Human Services retained Gruber in March 2009 to produce, as the contract stipulated, “a series of technical memoranda on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform.”

That contract netted Gruber $95,000, and an additional HHS contract, inked that June, added $297,600 to the deal – steering almost $400,000 to the creator of the Gruber Microsimulation Model. Still another contract with the agency, as reported here, was said to have exceeded $2 million in value since 2007.  

The National Institutes of Health clinched a deal for a like amount ($2.05 million), and the Department of Justice contracted with Gruber for nearly $1.74 million. DOJ? You might ask. Why would the Justice Department be hiring the architect of ObamaCare? Records show Gruber earned the DOJ fee for helping to develop viable incentives to be extended to the tobacco companies in order to dissuade them from targeting teen smokers.

Similarly, Gruber collected $103,500 from the State Department for his services as an expert witness, providing testimony in a NAFTA dispute with a Canadian tobacco firm.

Then there are the state governments. The Fox News review finds Gruber and his firm have consulted for, or provided computer modeling to, at least fifteen states. Glenn Kessler, the widely respected Washington Post columnist who writes under the moniker “The Fact Checker,” reported last week that “at least eight states” have hired Gruber to assist with the launching of their health care exchanges – and Kessler added: “It’s safe to say that about $400,000 appears to be the standard rate for gaining access to the Gruber Microsimulation Model.”

Fox News found that Gruber and his firm shared in a $481,050 contract with Michigan, a $400,000 deal with Wisconsin, and a contract with Minnesota worth nearly $330,000. Other contracts included deals with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts – where Gruber notably worked with then-Gov. Mitt Romney – Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime Gruber critic, told Fox News on Monday that the economist has never been as transparent as he should have been in divulging his consulting contracts to lawmakers when he was testifying before them. “This is not saying the amount of money he made was wrong,” Grassley said, “but when he’s testifying before Congress, there ought to be full disclosure of this so that you know if he’s got a non-biased opinion — or not.”

By all accounts, Gruber is among a handful of economists with top-tier expertise in developing the kind of models that HHS and other agencies depend upon in the formulation of massive initiatives like ObamaCare, and one expert in government contracting told Fox News the MIT professor has carved out a “lucrative” niche.

Let’s sum up what Citizen Gruber has related to us, through those off-the-cuff videos, which have surfaced during the last week…

In one of the videos that surfaced in recent days in which the man described by the Obama campaign as having helped to write Obamacare describes the many ways voters he calls stupid were easily misled about the bill by those pushing it, Gruber says the Cadillac tax will do exactly what the president pledged it would not — dissuade employers in general from providing insurance for its employees .

“Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance,” Gruber said at the Pioneer Institute for public policy research in Boston in 2011. The subsidy is “terrible policy,” Gruber said.

“It turns out politically it’s really hard to get rid of,” Gruber said.

Gruber said the only way those pushing for Obamacare could get rid of the tax subsidy for employer provider health insurance was to tax the more generous, or Cadillac, plans — “mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

The second way was have the tax kick in “late, starting in 2018” and have its rate of growth tied to the consumer price index instead of to the much higher rate of medical inflation. Eventually, the 40% tax on the more expensive plans would impact every employer-provided insurance plan.

“What that means is the tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer sponsored plans,” Gruber said. “This was the only political way we were ever going to take on one of the worst public policies in America.”

By 2018, Gruber said, those who object to the tax will be obligated to figure out how to come up with the trillion dollars that repealing the tax will take from the U.S. Treasury, or risk significantly adding to the national debt.

This is obviously exactly what Obama told voters in 2009 he had “taken off the table.” It is exactly a process to “eliminate the tax deduction that employers get for providing you with health insurance” that five years ago Obama noted would result in “a lot of employers then would stop providing health care, and we’d probably see more people lose their health insurance than currently have it.”

In other words, Obama and his fellow Liberal Weasels screwed us all.

The harsh reality of my future existence being controlled by a Federal Government, who cannot even properly construct a stinkin’ website, makes me glad I place my faith in God and not in a President.

Now, see if you can follow this:

I have actually been told by Liberals and “Fiscal Conservatives” (but, I repeat myself) that I am “selfish” in my concern that, as a lifelong severe asthmatic, I will not have an affordable, life-saving, health insurance plan available to me in 2014, after ObamaCare.

According to projections, which the Obama Administration itself issued back in July 2010, officials knew the devastating impact of ObamaCare 4 years ago.

Additionally, According to the Federal Register, its mid-range estimate was that by the end of 2014, 76 percent of small group plans would be cancelled, along with 55 percent of large employer plans.

The reason?

Current plans don’t meet the requirements of ObamaCare, which dictate that each plan must cover a list of essential benefits, whether people want them or not.

“Essential benefits” like Free Birth Control and Maternity Care.

Excuse me, Soooper-Geniuses…but, after a certain age, those “benefits” are not longer “essential”.

I am alive today, thanks to the American Healthcare System that your “messiah” and the rest of you Liberal idiots, on both sides of the political aisle, are trying to turn into a money-making arm of the Federal Government, not out of any altruism, but out of an unbridled lust for control of Americans’ lives from cradle to grave.

Now that the little. money-grubbing weasel has spilled the beans, as to how this Administration and their fellow weasels in Congress really feel about the people whom they are supposed to be serving…can’t you just see some of the Democrat Congresscritters, huddled in a Congressional Cloakroom?

We’ve got to protect our phony-boloney jobs, gentlemen! Hrumph!

German-American Political Theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) once said,

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.

And, since Obama and his Democrat minions had no clue as to what was actually in The Affordable Care Act”, and they did not want us to either, as Nancy Pelosi, herself, once quipped,

…we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it…

Now, that we have found out what is in it, Americans don’t want it.

And,  our entire nation, including Obama and the Democrats, are paying the price for all of their inefficient lies.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Is Obamacare on Its “Deathbed”?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

obamadoctorNo government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth! – Ronald Reagan

The big story in the news yesterday came as no surprise to me. President Barack Hussein Obama signature legislation known as Obamacare, has reached an all time low in popularity, coming in at 26% on an Associated Press poll.

Never in all of my life, or at least since I’ve been aware of our government and the way things work, have I seen such a relentless propaganda campaign by the American Government to force upon their citizens something that they did not want in the first place.

Government- run healthcare has been the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the Democratic Party for decades.

Back in the 90’s, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to get a Nationally-run Healthcare System of her own design put in place. Her dreams were dashed when United States citizens melted down the Congressional Phone Lines with a unified shout out of “NO WAY!”,  that could be heard from here to Asgard (a reference for you “Thor” fans out there).

Since then, the Democratic Party had no doubt been plotting in smoke filled rooms, biding their time, waiting for the chance to spring a nationally-run healthcare system upon the unsuspecting American people again.

And then came Barack Hussein Obama, a “clean and articulate” candidate, who was “down with the struggle” and intimate with a teleprompter.

When he ascended to the throne, Barack the Magnificent made no secret of his plans to nationalize and therefore ruin the greatest healthcare system in the world.

And, with both houses of Congress controlled by the Democrats, there was no way to stop him.

When America asked what specifically was in the “Affordable Care Act”, San Fran Nan Pelosi told us that she didn’t know either, and that Congress would have to pass  the bill to find out what was in it.

All the while, , “Baracky Claus” was assuring all of us good little girls and boys that” if we liked our doctor, we could keep our doctor. If we liked our health insurance plan, we could keep our health insurance plan.”

So on Christmas Eve of 2009, Baracky Claus’ little elves in Congress gave America a present we didn’t want.

Once the Democrats passed this bill into law, Americans soon found out why they were so reluctant to tell us exactly what was in the bill.

It turned out to a bill conceived on the misguided pretense that young Americans in their 20’s would be willing to pay the insurance bill for elderly people.

Heck, young folks are usually borrowing money from the grandparents…not giving it to them.

As this sick, twisted excuse for law started to be revealed, Americans found out that not only where we going to go trillions of dollars in debt, additionally, we were going to have to provide birth control for free to easy young women like Sandra Fluke. (Yeah. I said it.)

However, that wasn’t the worst of it.

We also found out the cancer treatments would be cut off at the age of 70. So,if you come down with cancer at the age of 70…tough.  But hold on…that’s not all: the government will decide what sort of treatment you get as you journey through your twilight years.

Oh, you broke her hip grandma? Well…here’s an aspirin.

And, that brings us to present day.

Obama has issued so many Executive Orders and made so many corrections to this awful law, that it is even more confusing than before he started making the corrections.

And, who could forget the launch of the Obamacare website?

It has turned out to be the biggest bomb since Rosie O’Donnell Variety Show. We found out that the company that designed it had an executive on that staff who went to college with First Lady Michelle Obama. They had previously screwed up jobs  in Canada, but the Obama administration hired them anyway.

After we got rid of them, it seemed like things were going better. However, now we find out that the back end of the website, the part that involves the insurance companies, is not completed.

And yet, the administration claims at least six million people have signed up.

You figure that one out. It gives me a headache.

So, it’s no surprise that Obamacare’s popularity is down to 26%. Heck,  its probably not even that high. The Associated Press probably polled more Democrats than anybody else.

In fact, Obamacare is so horrible that Democrats have been told not to run on it in the upcoming midterm election. A Campaign Adviser has told them to tell the gullible among us, that they will “fix it”.

Uh huh. And, the check’s in the mail.

However, don’t expect the GOP Establishment, or Vichy Republicans, as I call them, to do the politically-savvy thing and call for Obamacare to be shut down. Oh no. They want to “fix it” as well.

The harsh reality is, these “Beltway Bubble” Republicans, just like their buddies “across the aisle”, view a Nationally-run Healthcare System as a way to further expand the power and reach of the Federal Government and line the Federal Vaults with money…and, at least for some of them, keeping the travesty known as Obamacare gives them the opportunity to further line their pockets with money, as well.

The only ones hollering to do the right and logical thing, and  shut it down, are Ted Cruz and the rest of the Tea Party, or Reagan Conservative Republicans.

And, those are the ones we need to support and vote for this November.

Until He Comes,

KJ