Posted on 10/12/2014 10:38:40 AM PDT by Olog-hai
California’s health insurance exchange has awarded $184 million in contracts without the competitive bidding and oversight that is standard practice across state government, including deals that sent millions of dollars to a firm whose employees have long-standing ties to the agency's executive director.
Covered California’s no-bid contracts were for a variety of services, ranging from public relations to paying for ergonomic adjustments to work stations, according to an Associated Press review of contracting records obtained through the state Public Records Act.
Several of those contracts worth a total of $4.2 million went to a consulting firm, The Tori Group, whose founder has strong professional ties to agency Executive Director Peter Lee, while others were awarded to a subsidiary of a health care company he once headed.
Awarding no-bid contracts is unusual in state government, where rules promote “open and fair competition” to give taxpayers the best deal and avoid ethical conflicts. The practice is generally reserved for emergencies or when no known competition exists. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
So, in other words, to "compete" with the private health insurance companies one must not "compete" in the bid process.
The founder of The Tori Group, Leesa Tori, worked under Lee when she was a senior executive at Pacific Health Advantage, a small business insurance exchange that failed in 2006
Wow. The no bid went to he failed exec of a failed health company. This really, really stinks.
FOL
F riends
O f
L eftists
Any questions?
Bump
This state is sicker than ebola.
What really gripes me is the billions the FedGov has ripped out of Medicare to supply all this grant money to these outright CROOKS!!!
Medicare wasn't all that well off looking forward even before these crinimals leeched off multi-billions to fund Obama's exercise in futility!!!
Just playing around with the FOL. I don’t think Found Out Later is in danger of losing it’s standing.
At any rate, you and I agree on the ripping off of Medicare. As those funds are diverted, watch the government start complaining because the funds paid in are not balance out with the outlay.
They do this all the time with gasoline taxes. They take them for mass transit, then complain that the receipts are just not there. Duh!
That money had been collected out of our federal gas taxes and according to the milking machine grant writer and school administrators, "that money was just laying there waiting for someone to snatch it!"
I make my living as a self-employed out of my vehicles and this just gags me as I drive by it each day and have only seen about 2 bike riders and 3 joggers on it since it was paved about a month ago!!!
The only good thing I can see about it is that it got rid of the "Share The Road" signs with bicycles painted on them. Our state highways in these mountainous areas are no place for bicycles since there are numerous log truck, gravel trucks and tourista car barns blasting down these paved over horse trails with no shoulders on 'em!!!
Now the got a new law passed that you gotta give 'em three feet of clearance when you pass 'em… Baloney!!! Critical Mess, not "Critical Mass!"
LOLOLOLOL
and what did anyone expect?
This is largesse at its best .. and worst.
California DemoncRatic pOlitics&policies..
Hollow and full of hot air.
Vote all ya want. It ain’t changin’ anytime soon.
Yes, you and I are grinding away on the same sorts of things.
Those idiotic bicycle decals are all over down here now.
Bicycle lanes have been created numerous places, and frankly in some of them it gets down right confusing with all the scroll work on the roadway. The right turn access lanes have to compete with the bicycle lane markings, so those lanes are scrunched down as short as possible to accommodate the bikers. Even they must lose track of their safety zone in these messes.
Meanwhile the new electric street legal golf cart vehicles are relegated to side streets only because their top speed is 30 miles per hour. Never-mind that cyclists ride around at ten miles per hour or even less on the roadway weaving in and out of vehicle lanes.
The cost of these new marking must have been massive considering they had to do it all over. Streets were resurfaced to do it.
The biggest idiotic move I’ve see was one stretch of road in Eagle Rock. There was a three lane section of roadway for about three miles (on one side of the median). These three lanes were full certain of the day. Bicycles being so important an issue, they actually reduced one car lane to install the thin bike lane. As you state, you hardly every see a cyclist in the new lane.
Now cars are having to cram into only two lanes, so you can imagine the impact on traffic. While you’re sitting there in traffic, you can look out at the pristine bicycle path where the other auto lane used to be.
About twenty years ago now, they were going to install an auto lane on a stretch of roadway that feeds my street. I went to the city council and reminded them that street gets a lot of traffic, which is already backed up as it was with two lanes. I asked them to rethink it fast.
Luckily one of the city council members drove that street every day and agreed with me. They had already striped a block with the new one lane traffic, with a nice new bicycle lane replacing one vehicle lane. They had to go back, strip the new markings and return them to the old format.
These people will spend tens of millions (or more) at the drop of a hat. Some of it is just ridiculous in nature. It screws things up royally, in the process.
And of course it is taken out of our gas tax highway funds. So are mass transit buses, trains, rights of way... The list is long. I’ll bet the bullet train to nowhere taps the gas-tax highway fund significantly.
Makes my blood boil.
If you think that’s bad, look at Dublin, Ireland, where they are planning to turn the north quays of the Liffey River (mostly two lanes, eastbound direction) into a one-lane artery by turning the other lane into a bike lane. Dunno if common sense is going to hit at the last minute . . .
That may be a more dire and longer stretch of road, but that’s exactly what they tried to do to the street down the hill from me.
I know just what you mean.
Where does this utter foolishness come from. All of a sudden it’s global. Good freakin grief.
Now they're trying to "transform" our beloved nation into a mirror image of that Chi-Com morass in every way!!!
But even more than that, I despise the old-world europeein idea of "ROUND-A-BOUTS!" Then with trucks, cars, bicycles, stretch limos, artickulated busses, skate boarders, golf carts, ete., etc., etc… Well, we left the old country to start our new nation and we don't need kings, queens, parliments, round-a-bouts or none of them other worn out old concepts!!!
I noticed that the city of Placerville, CA has a ballot measure that intends to defeat the city planners and fathers/muthas plan to screw up the main street with round-a-bouts!!! I almost wish I had a home there so I could vote to stick it to that insane round-a-bout notion!!!
Yeah, why would you want to do that? Very strange.
I looked at the Wikipedia page on it. It seems like you would have a lot of fender bender and worse accidents.
Imagine trying to traverse one of those during a massive rush hour traffic period.
Where do these people (idiots) come up with these strange ideas?
This new law is absolutely frightening, especial if it emboldens more bicyclists to ride 2 to 3 abreast on our mountain roads. Someone will die and someone will pay and it won't be the dead bicyclist.
All the off-highway parking now demands a $10 parking fee so everybody is trying to avoid paying that by parking free out along the highway. Meanwhile the "Critical Mass" bicyclers are swinging out into the 2 land highway to avoid the lengthy quad-cab pick-up trucks and all the mobs of peedestrines with their kids and dogs unleashed that are making it extremely hairy and scary for all the log trucks hauling scorched logs, rented motorhome drivers on their maiden voyages, etc., etc., etc…
All this for the harmonic convergence at the confluence of the north and middle forks of the un-dammed American River, racing to become salty sea water once again!!! The maddness continues with amplification galore!!!
Do you get the irony? A monument to the predecessors of GANG-GREEN Europeein EnvironMentalists being replaced by a stupid round-a-bout???
Sounds almost like walking through a pasture and trying not to take a step that doesn’t land on cow stuff.
Back in the ‘70’s some guy kicked what he thought was a cow pie and it really hurt his toe. Turns out it was a huge gold nugget worth a small fortune! Maybe that was the beginnings of the Golden State turning to crappola in the first Jerry Brown maladministration, ya think???
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