<b>The Advice of "Chief Advisor" Valerie Jarrett--- Malkin calls it: Do It Yourself Vetting</b>

Advice on “green energy” czar Van Jones--- HIRE HIM!
Advice on Healthcare--- DUMP and DECEIVE the POOR PUBLIC (in action, not word)
Advice on Public Housing for the Poor and Underprivileged--- SCREW EM! (in action, not word)

“Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House, we've been watching him, really, for - he's not that old— but for as long as he's been active out of Oakland and all of the ways that he has - the creative ideas that he has and so now we have captured that and we have all that energy and enthusiasm in the White House”

<>Advice on Healthcare: Dump and Deceive the Poor Public (in action, not word)

Republicans on Capitol Hill are taking a fresh look at one of the seedier Chicago stories from Barack and Michelle Obama's past in ratcheting up the debate on Obamacare: the University of Chicago Hospital's "Urban Health Initiative," which Michelle Obama ran prior to her taking a leave of absence to campaign with her husband in 2007.

Because of the medical center's location on the South Side of Chicago, a large number of indigent patients, without health insurance, were using the hospital's emergency room for care. The nonprofit hospital, which in 2007 made more than $100 million in profits, largely because its beds and facilities were used by paying patients and those fully insured, paid Mrs. Obama to oversee the Urban Health Initiative program that identified indigent patients and then steered them to other area medical facilities. In fact, some of those profits came from Canadian citizens who traveled to the U.S. for medical procedures they could not get due to Canada's restrictive national health care programs.

It wasn't just Obama's wife who was involved in creating the program. Senior White House adviser and political strategist, David Axelrod, and his PR firm in Chicago were retained to develop a media campaign to encourage area residents not to use University of Chicago as a medical facility. Senior White House official, and Obama friend, Valerie Jarrett served on the board of directors of the hospital and approved the plan for the Urban Health Initiative, and the hiring of Axelrod. And on the recommendation of then Senator Obama, Dr. Eric Whitaker, was named director of the Initiative in late 2007, after serving as the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, a job he got after Obama recommended him to then Gov. Rod Blagojevich via another Obama crony, Tony Rezko, a fund-raiser for Obama and now a convicted felon on federal corruption charges. Candidate Obama thought enough of the program to tout it as an example of how health care reform should be done….

The resultant PR campaign was a study in Orwellian audacity. Chicago's inner city residents soon began hearing that UCMC's patient dumping program would "dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents" and that the medical center was generously willing to provide "a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers." Likewise, the people who ran the community hospitals to which these unwanted patients were being shuttled began to read claims in local media to the effect that the Urban Health Initiative was good for them as well. Dr. Eric Whitaker, the Blagojevich crony who succeeded Mrs. Obama as Director of the program, repeatedly assured gullible reporters that the financial impact on these hospitals would be positive: "The initiative actually is improving their bottom lines." The CFOs of those hospitals were no doubt relieved to learn that treating Medicaid and uninsured patients is profitable.

See also:
Michelle Obama’s Shady Involvement in Chicago Hospital’s “Patient Dumping” of the Poor Being Investigated
http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/2009/07/27/michelle-obamas-shady-involvement-in-chicago-hospitals-patient-dumping-of-the-poor-being-investigated/
U. of C. shunning poor patients?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1122691,CST-NWS-hosp23.article

Advice on Public Housing for the Poor and Underpriviledged: Screw em! (in action, not word)

Valerie Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

The owner, a local nonprofit company called Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp....Woodlawn Preservation hired a private management firm, William Moorehead and Associates, to oversee the complex. In 2001, the company lost that contract and a contract to manage several public housing projects for allegedly failing to do its job. The company's head, William Moorehead, was subsequently convicted of embezzling almost $1 million in management fees.

Woodlawn Preservation hired a new property manager, Habitat Co. At the time, the company was headed by its founder, Daniel Levin, also a major contributor to Obama's campaigns. Valerie Jarrett was executive vice president.

Residents say the complex deteriorated under Moorehead's management and continued to decline after Habitat took over. A maintenance worker at the complex says money often wasn't even available for steel wool to plug rat holes. But as late as 2003, a routine federal inspection still gave conditions at Grove Parc a score of 82 on a 100-point scale.

“About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.”

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/?page=full

See also:
What the NYT’s 8,100-word Valerie Jarrett profile didn’t tell you http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/27/what-the-nyts-8100-word-valerie-jarrett-profile-didnt-tell-you/

Jarrett has surrounded herself with some rather unsavory characters who appear to be more like 'enforcers' than 'advisers.'

Strautmanis is one of Barack and Michelle Obama's closest friends, going all the way back to the beginning in Chicago. He has worked not only for the Obamas but for disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

But here is an interesting tidbit concerning Strautmanis, in Jarrett's own words:

Obama describes him as a “utility man,” and campaign advisor and Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett says he’s the person you call when you need help with a delicate situation. “He understands the importance of the personal touch and that e-mails and phone calls are not always appropriate,” she said, talking about a specific example that she wouldn’t describe in detail…

http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m9d5-The-powers-behind-the-throne

Since moving to the White House, Jarrett has resigned her position as chief executive of Habitat Co., one of the Midwest's largest property-management firms. Her report shows she earned $550,000 in deferred compensation from Habitat Executive Services, plus a salary of $302,000 in 2008.

She also reported $346,687 in income from serving on seven boards, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Jarrett's most lucrative fee as a director was $146,643 from Chicago-based USG Corp., a building products maker.

Jarrett is also still receiving compensation from the Chicago Transit Authority, where she was Mayor Richard Daley's handpicked chairwoman from 1995 to 2003. She estimated $35,559 in deferred compensation as part of the CTA's supplemental retirement plan.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-white-house-wealthapr09,0,1573304.story

Relevant to the health care bill:

Michelle Obama’s Patient-Dumping Scheme

###

The First Lady helped create a notorious program that dumped poor patients on community hospitals, yet the national media ignore the story. Imagine if her husband were a Republican.

The University of Chicago Medical Center has received a good deal of justly opprobrious press over its policy of “redirecting” low-income patients to community hospitals while reserving its own beds for well-heeled patients requiring highly profitable procedures.

Substantial coverage was given to a recent indictment of the program by the American College of Emergency Physicians. ACEP’s president, Dr. Nick Jouriles, released a statement suggesting that the initiative comes “dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act, and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”

Oddly absent from most of the unflattering press coverage of UCMC’s patient-dumping scheme is any mention of the role our new First Lady played in devising the program. A laudable exception has been the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported last August that “Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program.”

On the rare occasions when other “news” media have bothered to connect the Urban Health Initiative to its glamorous creator, they have attempted to whitewash this tawdry program. Typical of such disingenuous coverage was a story in the Washington Post, which described it as “an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics.”

But no amount of journalistic lipstick can hide the reality that Mrs. Obama’s initiative is a patient-dumping scheme. Such “cherry-picking,” as Dr. Jouriles accurately describes it, was, at one time, fairly common.

Prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago Medical Center routinely “dumped” Medicaid, uninsured and other unprofitable patients on less mercenary community hospitals.

Many patients suffered needlessly, and more than a few actually died, as the result of this practice. So, in 1986, President Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA) into law.

EMTALA made such “redirection” illegal, but many high profile hospitals still chafed at being forced to treat poor patients.

Enter Michelle Obama, UCMC’s “Vice President for Community and External Affairs.”

Mrs. Obama first hatched the UCMC program as the “South Side Health Collaborative,” which featured a gang of “counselors” whose job it was to “advise” low-income patients that they would be better off at other hospitals and clinics.

The program was so successful in getting rid of unwanted patients that she expanded it, gave it a new name, and hired none other than David Axelrod to sell the program to the public.

According to the Sun-Times, “Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring.” Axelrod helped the future First Lady formulate a public relations campaign in which the “Urban Health Initiative” was represented as a boon to the community actuated by the purest of altruistic motives.

The resultant PR campaign was a study in Orwellian audacity. Chicago’s inner city residents soon began hearing that UCMC’s patient dumping program would “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents” and that the medical center was generously willing to provide “a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers.”

Likewise, the people who ran the community hospitals to which these unwanted patients were being shuttled began to read claims in local media to the effect that the Urban Health Initiative was good for them as well.

Dr. Eric Whitaker, the Blagojevich crony who succeeded Mrs. Obama as Director of the program, repeatedly assured gullible reporters that the financial impact on these hospitals would be positive: “The initiative actually is improving their bottom lines.” The CFOs of those hospitals were no doubt relieved to learn that treating Medicaid and uninsured patients is profitable.

But you just can’t please some people. In one of the few frank passages of the Post article, we discover that many members of UCMC’s medical staff believe the program is nothing more than an “attempt to ensure that the hospital retains only affluent patients with insurance.”

And another association of emergency physicians has joined ACEP in denouncing the Urban Health Initiative. The Chicago Tribune reports that Dr. Larry Weiss, president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine is unhappy about UCMC’s failure to consult its own ER physicians before initiating the program: “Not including emergency-room physicians ... would be analogous to changing the way surgery is performed in an operating room without involving any surgeons.” Dr. Whitaker assures us, however, that such critics are merely “opposed to change.”

Presumably, he would be similarly dismissive of Angela Adams, who brought her son to the medical center’s ER after his lip had been partially torn off by a pit bull.

As the Tribune puts it, “Instead of rushing Dontae into surgery ... the hospital’s staff began pressing her about insurance.” Unfortunately for Dontae, he was covered by Medicaid. So, all he got from the UCMC emergency department was a shot, some antibiotics, and instructions to “follow up with Cook County.”

Angela had to take her son across town to John Stroger Hospital, where he was immediately admitted for reconstructive surgery. Like doctors Jouriles and Weiss, Angela is having trouble seeing the community benefit of the Urban Health Initiative.

Meanwhile, the program’s parents, Michelle Obama and David Axelrod, have moved to Washington. As the First Lady and the President’s closest advisor, they wield enormous power.

Indeed, they may be the most powerful people in the Obama Administration, aside from the President himself. If these two characters were willing to betray their Chicago neighbors — the South Side’s most vulnerable citizens — with a disgraceful program like the Urban Health Initiative, what sort of mischief will they devise for the hapless denizens of flyover country?

Come to think of it, isn’t Obamacare being sold to us in pretty much the same way the Urban Health Initiative was sold to Chicago?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/michelle_obamas_patientdumping_1.html

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