Posted on 09/18/2015 2:45:14 PM PDT by jazusamo
Months after Judicial Watch exposed massive security risks with the government’s healthcare.gov website, afederal audit reveals that the public employees responsible for overseeing the disastrous Obamacare site were not properly trained, failed to keep adequate records and stood by as delays mounted to millions over the original contract costs.
We’re talking an astounding $600 million in contracts to build the website for the president’s signature healthcare law. The government employees tasked with supervising the colossal project actually helped private contractors fleece American taxpayers, according to an investigation conducted by the Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General (IG). Most of the derelict employees work at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which manages federal healthcare programs including Obamacare. The IG determined there were widespread failures and poor oversight by CMS, which functions under HHS.
The investigation focused on nearly two dozen contracts considered to be most important to the operation of the website, which was supposed to create a marketplace that serves as a one-stop shop for health insurance. Instead, it’s had a multitude of problems that have been well-documented in the media. The deals to develop this federal insurance marketplace went mostly to eight politically connected companies that raked in north of $600 million, the IG’s report says. “As of March 31, 2014, CMS had identified 62 contracts that it had awarded to 35 different contractors to develop, implement, and operate the Federal marketplace,” the report states.
That means there are a lot of taxpayer dollars floating around for this cause. You’d think the government would select its finest employees to oversee the deals. Instead, CMS violated federal rules by assigning unqualified employees to oversee contracts worth more than $10 million, according to the audit. In one case an unqualified agency employee, who didn’t even have lower-level certification to supervise contracts over $25,000, oversaw a $130 million deal for more than a year. In a separate case documented by the IG, an unauthorized CMS worker allowed an eye-popping $28 million cost overrun that wasn’t even identified until the agency finally assigned a more knowledgeable staffer to take over the deal.
These atrocious examples are probably not the half of it because CMS couldn’t even provide investigators with routine documents that should have been readily available. That means there’s no telling the true magnitude of the damage. As for accountability, there appears to be none as is often the case in government. The Obama officials—former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and former CMS head Marilyn Tavenner—in charge of this boondoggle are both gone and it’s highly unlikely either will face any consequences.
The HHS watchdog report only confirms the fraud and corruption that has plagued the president’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system. Back in 2013 Judicial Watch reported that healthcare.gov was designed by a team made up entirely of Obama minions, including the design manager for the president’s 2008 campaign and the White House Deputy Director of New Media. The expert team of Obama pals promised to deliver a bilingual website that would be the healthcare law’s centerpiece and serve as an essential tool that would guide millions of Americans through the rigorous process of choosing insurance.
Despite huge failures, the government officials in charge of Obamacare’s tumultuous implementation and beleaguered health exchange website quietly received tens of thousands of dollars in performance bonuses and other taxpayer-funded perks. In fact, last year JW obtained records documenting that enraging reward system. JW has also exposed incriminating HHS records detailing a massive, taxpayer-funded multi-media campaign designed to promote Obamacare. A few years ago JW reported on a controversial Obamacare initiative that gives “community-based organizations” $1 billion to devise “compelling new ideas” to deliver better services to those “with the highest health care needs”
Speaker Pelosi said the Affordable Care Act had to be passed to find out what's in it. The Act was passed without one Republican vote. The implimentation of it under 0bama and his corrupt lapdogs have ripped off American taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Thank goodness for watchdogs like Judicial Watch for not forgetting this ripoff by Democrats because most Americans have.
Pelosi: "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It"
Where’s the out cry over this? Where’s the MSM, GOPee, talking heads, washington cartel, RINOs....
Come on people, let us hear some out cry about it...oh,I forgot, your spineless sissies and are hiding in the closets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No problem for the hated, lying GOP.
1) They created ObamaCARE/RomneyCARE first.
2) They, their families and staff and their families,
are EXEMPT.
3) They already are EXEMPT from SEC Laws and made
money, lots of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$,
like Boehner the complicit orange liar.
This was not “fraud and negligence”. Everyone was aware of what would happen, because it was carefully planned.
BUMP!
The gutless Congress has allowed themselves to become a rubber-stamp Parliament for a megalomaniacal, venal and ruthless king.
“There’s a woman I want to execute, but she’s mad as well.
Tell Parliament I want the law changed prohibiting women and insane people from being killed.” King Obama I
“Yes, your Grace!” Vassals McConnell and Boehner
Tweedledee and Tweedledum appearing before Congress and the MSM: “We fought the good fight, but if we manage to pass it, He will just toss it out. So we may as well just pass it and crawl back to the castle on our bellies like reptiles and ... “
Twitch and Weepy John
EXHIBIT ONE: a NJ school supt was arrested in the fall of 2010 and charged with 17 counts of bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud.
Authorities say that while serving as NJ high school superintendent, he and his co-conspirator, a Maryland insurance broker, concocted a scheme to inflate school insurance charges and kick back part of the money as bribes.
The two are accused of concealing more than $1 million in bribes from insurance brokers and other service providers. The company, Federal Hill Risk Management, served as the insurance broker for the NJ Regional school district from 1978.
Court documents say the two men spent stolen money on home renovations, watches that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and other personal expenses......and also allegedly bought a girlfriend - also on the school district payroll - a car and other gifts, including money for the college tuition of one of her relatives, according to court papers.
A federal investigation of the insurance broker of Baltimore has to do with NJ municipalities and NJ school plans---he is under state indictment for allegedly bilking $2.6 million from one school district and more than $200,000 from the muni, and was indicted by a federal grand jury.
The broker's son-in-law and a business partner were charged with stealing $216,000 from the NJ muni for a nonexistent wellness program for city workers.
A state grand jury issued an indictment in July charging money laundering, conspiracy, forgery and theft by deception. Authorities said they bilked $2.6 million from the schools over a six-year period.
A third man, of Bernardsville, pleaded guilty to theft by deception and false representation for a government contract in the same scheme targeting the school district.
The co-conspirators are alleged to have lied to the school’s insurance carrier, Cigna----they told Cigna that the school board authorized the insurance carrier to pay fees on behalf of the school board from its medical claims bank account for health care related programs and services that never existed, authorities said. That money, stolen from Nov 2003 to July 2009, went into personal bank accounts, the indictment alleges.
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EXHIBIT TWO: Judy Rapfogel a 37-year NY state legislature employee---once COS to Speaker Sheldon Silver---is under investigation after her husband, William Rapfogel, was fired as CEO of the NY Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
Investigators said Mr Rapfogel bought insurance policies for the Met Council at inflated prices and pocketed some of the excess funds as kickbacks....and directed other funds from the insurer to NY political campaigns.
INSURANCE SCAM OF LONG-STANDING---NYT REPORT--Sixteen years ago, Judy Rapfogel, now chief of staff to Democratic Sheldon Silver, ran for the NY City Council---the seat was in Mr. Silver’s home district and was unusually heavy on political firepower, especially when compared with Judy Rapfogel's rather modest campaign budget of $160,000.
But among the various campaign expenditures for Council candidate, Judy Rapfogel, was a disproportionate sum spent on a seemingly peripheral need: automobile insurance. The insurance payments accounted for 6 percent of Judy Rapfogels campaign’s spending, and cost more than double what the campaign spent to lease the vehicles themselves.
Fast forward to 2013---sixteen years after her losing campaign, a criminal complaint filed against Ms. Rapfogel’s husband has cast new light on Judy's long-ago insurance payments. Mr. Rapfogel is accused of conspiring for more than 20 years to pad payments from the tax-exempt Met Council (largely subsidized by state, city and fderal taxpayers), to a small Long Island insurance brokerage in exchange for kickbacks from the brokerage.
Century Coverage Corporation, the insurance brokerage at the center of Mr Rapfogel's criminal complaint, is the same one that Judy Rapfogel’s 1997 campaign paid for unusually large insurance coverage.
A spokesman for Mr. Silver said that Ms. Rapfogel was also not aware that her 1997 campaign had paid Century. The treasurer for Ms. Rapfogel’s campaign, Freda Fried, did not return calls or e-mails. Ms. Fried is Mr. Rapfogel’s sister.
Judy Rapfogel has not been implicated in the criminal case against her husband but is now being connected peripherally via the Century Insurance payments for her 1997 campaign.....she has hired a lawyer.
=================================================
Authorities said Rapfogel is suspected of stealing $5 million and kept at least $1 million in kickbacks for himself with the rest going to unnamed co-conspirators....... and paid no taxes on the ill-gotten gains.
Investigators seized about $400,000 in bricks of cash Rapfogel stashed in his and Judy's home. Judy Rapfogel said "she did not know" about her husband's stash and did not know about the $100,000 cash gift he gave to their son to purchase a house.
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Since 2003, city and state politicians have steered $5 million to the Met Council in discretionary funds known as “member items.” By law, charities like the Met Council cannot return the favor by assisting candidates directly or indirectly. But Rapfogel appears to have pushed the interpretation of that law, and at times, Rapfogel’s role as a fund-raiser has been quite direct.
Mr Rapfogel is listed in campaign finance records as collecting $18,250 for assorted candidates from 1994 to 2007. Nearly half of that money — $8,500 — came from people tied to Century Coverage. Century executives and their relatives have also donated or raised $130,000 for politicians who have funded the Met Council, records show.
One such politician is Speaker Silver, who has appropriated $868,000 in discretionary funds to the Met Council since 2006, and received $8,500 for his political committees from Century employees, records show.
Democrat David Weprin is another. From 2004 through 2009, when he was a city councilman, Weprin’s campaign committee received eight checks totaling $4,950 from Century employees. During that time, Weprin sponsored $700,000 in discretionary funds for the Met Council. Weprin, now an assemblyman, did not return calls seeking comment.
A source close to Rapfogel said Rapfogel would let candidates receiving donations tied to the insurance company know that he was responsible for raising it. The source said that from Rapfogel’s perspective, using the insurance company to spread campaign donations “became an indirect way to do what he couldn’t do directly — make political contributions.”
$600 million.
Trump could arguably build his wall and deport illegal aliens for that price.
Obama signs h/care bill into law. Nancy is ecstatic.
0Care is the vehicle by which ALL of the DC cabal will get their pockets lined. Nothing more.
Yep, she’s ecstatic and what a sickening pic, thanks for posting it.
How $4.3 billion tax dollars to then-Sen Mary Landrieu (Dem-LA) was attached to the Obamacare bill, and how Obama and Harry Reid failed to catch and fix it, is yet another indictment of the Obamacare atrocity.
The payoff to Landrieu should be investigated as an indication of how EVERY Democrat came to vote for Obamacare.
BACKSTORY In the fall of 2009, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was trying to get the necessary 60 Dimocrat votes to pass the Affordable Care Act. Reid needed every Dim on board, which gave waffling senators a great deal of leverage.
In Landrieu's case, she connivingly saw that selling her aye vote could get her maybe $200 million federal dollars. Obama complied--- Reid chalked up another vote for Obamacare---but $4.3 went to Landrieu not the $200,000 she had bargained for.
<><> Was Mary the baglady for buying the other senators aye votes?
THE LANDRIEU PAPER TRAIL IS HUGE Landrieu sold her aye vote for a "price." Landrieu was bought off in what Forbes Magazine dubbed "The 'Louisiana Purchase" that included a massive $4.3 Billion to Landrieu.
FORBES REPORTED the Democrats’ nailed Landrieu’s support for Obamacare w/ a greenback bribe. Landrieu, critics believe, pledged her vote in exchange for some $200 million more additional federal funds for Louisiana. Except that, due to a drafting error, the law ended up giving Louisiana $4.3 billion: more than twenty times the assigned amount.
MORE HERE http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
The Untraceable $8 Billion ObamaCare PR Budget---truly govt fraud at its finest. Egged on by Pelosi, no one in Congress told Americans about Section 4002---which mandates an $8B untraceable fund to "promote" Obamacare (apparently b/c Boobamba had so little confidence in his signature legislation).
In 2010 Taxpayers are extorted $500 million, in 2011, $750 million, 2012, $1 billion, 2013, $1.25 billion, 2014, $1.5 billion and in 2015 and on, $2 billion........
....the reasons for all those O/Care delays, fixits, exemptions, waivers, extensions, etc, are becoming crystal clear.
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CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN---REQUEST A COPY OF THIS All tax allocations are explicitly detailed in the Congressional Record as to their use and limitations, etc.
Yep...He looks like the slimy little RAT that he is in that graphic. :)
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