Free Republic

Many of us cheered in January of this year when Marilyn Tavenner, the woman who headed the disastrous rollout of the healthcare.gov website, announced she’d be stepping down from her position as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). At the time, we weren’t too focused on who would be replacing her. Waiting in the wings was Andrew M. Slavitt, now Acting Medicare Chief, who had been biding his time as CMS’ deputy administrator since July 2014. Even though he’s been accused of possible cronyism and conflicts of interest, Andy Slavitt has a special brand of insurance...

Journalist Matt Taibbi spoke to Brian Kilmeade about Mark Zuckerberg coming out against government censorship of social media and revealing the pressure he faced from the Biden administration to censor content on Facebook and Instagram. "On the whole, it is a net positive," Taibbi said. "Zuckerberg coming out and saying all this confirms a lot of what I reported and a lot of the information that came out from Jim Jordan's committee investigation into the Facebook Files. Even if it is not 100% sincere, it confirms some things and suggests that maybe these tech companies are afraid to continue doing...

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was accused of insider trading and fraud by tghe Department of Justice before he was assassinated on Wednesday in Manhattan. Thompson, 50, was shot dead in what NYPD officials believe was a targeted attack as he exited the Hilton hotel before an investor conference. His killer remains on the loose. Last year the DoJ launched a probe into whether the nation's biggest insurer, led by Thompson, was unfairly restricting competitors and running a monopoly. The DoJ then filed a lawsuit in October naming Thompson and other executives, accusing the CEO of failing to tell investors about...

Andrew Slavitt, a former executive at the technology company tasked with saving HealthCare.gov and current second-in-command at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was granted an ethics waiver by the Department of Health and Human Services to begin working with his former company immediately.The waiver was granted despite Republican lawmakers’ concerns about Slavitt’s potential conflict of interest. The Daily Signal revealed those concerns in a story yesterday.Slavitt, a former OptumInsight/QSSI group vice president, left the company last month to work as the principal deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Obamacare and HealthCare.gov. His...

UnitedHealth cured the Ingenix stigma by simply changing its name to OptumInsight. It’s as though they made a deal with a witness protection program. Like other large medical insurers, over the years, they sustain fines for federal racketeering, skirt state laws by systematically reducing, denying and delaying payments owed to doctors for medical care and pay fines in the billions and still they continue on! Who dispenses Medicare and ACA money? Who controls the prices that the exchanges charge? And who is operating the very workings of the exchanges? That would be the leaders of the pack, UnitedHealth and Optum....

<p>The Obama administration has decided to retain Quality Software Services Inc. as its general contractor for HealthCare.gov, even as it has hired a new contractor to do most of the work on the Web site.</p> <p>In a joint statement Tuesday, Optum/QSSI and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said they would keep working together to ensure the online federal health insurance marketplace works well for consumers. On Saturday, CMS signed a contract with the global consulting firm Accenture to serve as the site's primary contractor in the coming year.</p>