Obamacare: Gruber, Graft, and Money-Grubbing Weasels

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

 

ObamaCare: Thoughts From an Average American on His 55th Birthday

obamadoctorYesterday afternoon, I left work early to go to the Doctor’s Office. It was a scheduled visit, as I have to have my blood tested every 6 months, due to an Asthma Medicine I have been on since 1982. I have to have blood drawn to make sure that the medicine has not turned toxic in my system.

However, that was just part of the story. You see, I turn 55 years old today.  And, over the Thanksgiving Holiday, my left arm has been hurting, along with my chest a little bit, and I have experienced a buzzing in my face, like you get when you a top a hill, doing 45 in a 35 mph zone, and see a police car waiting there.

This situation brought back some unpleasant memories for me.  A couple of years ago, I had to undergo a Cardiac Cath. My heart rate was racing, and  an MRI and Stress Test did not reveal what was going on. Luckily, the Cath did not show any blockages. It turned out that the Blood Pressure Medicine I was on was making my heart race. The Cardiac Doctor put me on a different medicine, and I have been fine ever since.

In addition to my own history, my family has a history of heart disease. I lost my Daddy to a massive heart attack at the age of 79. Plus, I lost his brother, my uncle, at the age I am now, from a massive heart attack and his daughter, my cousin, had to have two stents put in, when she was 54.

So, to say I was concerned would be an understatement. 

Imagine my relief when, upon examination yesterday, it turned out that the cause of my dizziness and buzzing face was a Sinus Infection and fluid on each ear. My heart is strong and my blood pressure is great…126/80. And, my arm was hurting after wrestling repeatedly with a reclining couch, whose springs on my side, keep popping out of their sleeves.

So, a few days of some Zyrtec and Cipro, and I will be fine.

As I paid my $30 co-pay and left the Doctor’s Office, I got to thinking…will I even have my Company Health Insurance Plan a year from now?

According to the experts, the answer may well be NO!

80 million Americans are predicted to lose their Company Health Insurance Plans because of ObamaCare.

Let me repeat that number slowly, for any Liberals who may be reading this…8-0 m-i-l-l-i-o-n A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n-s.

And then, even if you have the money to afford Obamacare, and actually enter all of your personal information into the database at healthcare.gov, your entire life could be ruined anyway.

Last night, CNBC reported that

It could take a year to secure the risk of “high exposures” of personal information on the federal Obamacare online exchange, a cybersecurity expert told CNBC on Monday.

“When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time,” said David Kennedy, a so-called “white hat” hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week.

“It’s really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn’t built into it,” said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. “We’re talking multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the implementation of the website, the components used to build the site are compliant with standards set by Federal security authorities.

“The privacy and security of consumers’ personal information are a top priority for us. Security testing happens on an ongoing basis using industry best practices to appropriately safeguard consumers’ personal information,” said the spokesperson.

Another online security expert—who spoke at last week’s House hearing and then on CNBC—said the federal Obamacare website needs to be shut down and rebuilt from scratch. Morgan Wright, CEO of Crowd Sourced Investigations said: “There’s not a plan to fix this that meets the sniff test of being reasonable.”

Last month, a Sept. 27 government memorandum surfaced in which two HHS officials said the security of the site had not been properly tested before it opened, creating “a high risk.”

HHS had explained then that steps were taken to ease security concerns after the memo was written, and that consumer information was secure. Technicians fixed a security bug in the password reset function in late October, the agency said.

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 three years ago.

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.

Take your rapidly-tanking “Affordable Care Act”, along with your over-sized and under-stuffed craniums, do something anatomically impossible…and disappear.

Average Americans, like myself, and the land that we love, will be a lot better off.

Until He Comes,

KJ