Posted on 10/15/2015 7:54:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Obamacare, depending on who you ask in the GOP, is either a calculated Trojan Horse designed to collapse and release single payer health care upon the American public, a flawed piece of legislation that needs badly to be revised, or the greatest evil inflicted on the American public since slavery. But what if it was something far simpler: namely, free money for Democrats? A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to congressional requesters provided to this author suggests that this explanation may, in fact, be the correct one.
Buried in the document’s appendices is a stunning statistic. Out of $5,509,074,183 in grants allocated to state-based exchanges, $1,453,766,433 was spent on actually building the IT infrastructure of Obamacare websites. More suspiciously still, nearly $2.4 billion was authorized for IT spending, and of the over $5.5 billion total, apparently only $3.2 billion was actually spent. However, despite the exchanges being $2.3 billion under budget, only a scant $300 million has been returned to the federal government so far.
A cynical observer might suggest that this money was never intended to be used for health care at all. Rather, it would seem that it went to Democratic governors as free money for them to shore up their coffers and pay them back for political support. Illegal? Unethical? Such concerns have never been worth much to an administration marked by the kind of Leftist political cynicism personified by President Obama’s administration.
But for the sake of argument, let’s give the states the benefit of the doubt, which brings us back to the obvious question: if only $300 million has been returned out of $2.3 billion that wasn’t spent at all, what happened to the other $2 billion? And if only $1.4 billion was spent of $2.4 billion authorized for IT spending, what happened to the other $1 billion of that?
Could this money have been spent on advertising for the state-based exchanges? One hopes not, considering the experience of Oregon.
Could it have been spent hiring staff to sign people up, either online or over the phone? If so, then why did sites crash and phone lines clog up under the weight of people trying to get coverage?
Could it have been spent getting people to enroll at all? Well, considering Hawaii signed up zero people while spending $200 million on its Obamacare special enrollment period, that would be quite the trick.
Was it used to help the poor afford better health care? Considering the deductibles many of them have to pay, the punchline almost writes itself.
Was it used on exchanges that worked at all? Well, Maryland spent more than the over $86 million it was allotted for IT, yet the exchange still went down in infamy for its failure. Oregon spent nearly all of its IT budget, yet its site fared even more hilariously poorly. Hawaii, meanwhile, spent nearly $90 million of its $120 million IT budget on a site that, again, signed up zero people.
In other words, the money that is accounted for seems to have been tossed down the drain, while the money that hasn’t been accounted for clearly can’t have gone to anything that would’ve made the exchanges work better, because nothing in their operation suggests that anything was spent to improve them at all. Where, then, did those phantom billions go, if not to what it was actually intended to do?
Fortunately, now that Congress has the aforementioned report in their hands, they can ask these sorts of questions of people such as President Obama’s acting head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies (CMS), Andy Slavitt. Slavitt needs to give the American people a precise accounting of what the states spent, and why they’ve only sent back $300 million, when they allegedly came in at least $2.3 billion under budget. Where is the extra money, and why hasn’t he demanded it back from the administration’s political allies?
These are not questions that Congress can shy away from, and they’re not questions that the Obama administration should be allowed to avoid. The math is there in cold black and white. Now it’s time to see whether Obamacare truly ended in the black, or if it’s only the ultimate black mark on this administration’s already corrupt record.
Death to many in DC is my wish.
Mysterious??? Hardly.
Think the Obamacare rip is bad? Analyze the “STIMULUS” and where a huge chunk of that money is.
Revenue neutral!
Money funneled to fund Obama’s creation: ISIS
Along with the money missing from the State Department.
Not to mention the possibility that the IT contracts may have been let to companies run by crony pals of the administration. Look at the initial Fed Obamacare website. A billion bucks... and much of the code had to be reworked.
That’s a Solyndra-like disguised payout, where the benefit goes to politically connected pals who run a subpar business on the side as an excuse for the money transfer.
Laundering.
++ Good
Yeah, I'll hold my breath for that to happen.
Pelosi was ecstatic at the O/Care signing. Here's why.
The Obamacare atrocity was a cunning vehicle for
consolidating Dummycrat power. Dems cashed-in bigtime.
(A) Michelle's buddy---botched the billion dollar web site rollout---still doesn't work.
(B) Harry Reid's $4 billion "accidental" payment to Landrieu is a clue to how the straight party-line vote got this atrocity passed.
(C) A multi-billion dollar slush fund---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.
Billy Sol Estes is green from envy.
This is why “global warming/climate change” is being pushed so hard ... a way to siphon money away from taxpayers and into the hands of Dem cronies. It’s a scam, pure & simple. Obamacare is the same, IMO ... in addition to all of it being a way to further government control over people.
ALL Democrat programs are money-laundering schemes to take care of their friends.
Looks like Obamacare falls under the RICO act.
2 comments:
1) its why cities like Chicago will never go bankrupt. There's always a way to fund those ridiculous pensions, bloated payrolls, and obvious corruption
2) As long as the USA has an unbacked, fiat currency, and a central bank that can print unlimited amounts of money and suppress interest rates, Progressives will ALWAYS be able to fund their schemes, and conservatives will continue to lose every major political, economic and social battle with them.
Whatever else it is, of course it is free money for Democrats. ALL Democrat designed programs are designed to provide copious amounts of Free Money for Democrats.
When the people at the top of an organization are crooks that 'attitude' filters down through the organization. Could Hillary's 'foundation' and Congress's 'easy laws' for their own bribery' be the genesis of this group-think?
And we thought that half billion dollar PAC came from donations.../s
His family is pending a whopping $1.5 BILLION dollars on themselves EVERY single year!
I guess his “We all must sacrifice” plea doesn’t apply to him and family
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