The $4 Billion ObamaCare Slush Fund for
Progressives
By Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
If you like how the Obama administration’s
multibillion-dollar “investments” in
bankrupt solar companies have turned out, you’ll
love the latest federal loan program to nowhere.
It’s the Obamacare loyalty rewards program for
progressives.
To appease liberal Democrats pushing for the
so-called “public
option” (the full frontal government takeover of
our health care system), the White House settled for
the creation of a $6 billion network of nonprofit
“CO-OPs” that will “compete” with private insurers.
It’s socialized medicine through the
side door. House Republicans sliced about $2
billion from the slush fund in last spring’s budget
deal and proclaimed the program
dead. Hardly.
On Wednesday, the White House trumpeted the
release of
nearly $700 million in taxpayer-funded low-interest
loans for seven CO-OPs in eight states.
Administered by the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, the fund will pour more money
into CO-OP plans nationwide throughout the next
year. In 2014, according to Washington bureaucrats,
the plans will be offered on the federally approved
and federally monitored state health exchange
“marketplace.”
Some marketplace. Given how Team Obama has
dispensed
special Obamacare waivers to scores of campaign
donors, it’s a sure bet the CO-OP/exchange mechanism
will be brazenly rigged against non-subsidized,
for-profit insurers. And against taxpayers. Obama
health officials assure us that there will be an
“early warning system” in place before loan
recipients get into financial trouble. But we know
from the half-billion-dollar Solyndra scam that when
this administration sees
red flags, it’s full speed ahead.
In fact, the Obamacare CO-OP overseers already
predict a nearly 40 percent default rate for the
loans, according to Kaiser Health. Welcome to the
Chicago-on-the-Potomac reverse
rule of holes: When you’re in one, keep
digging.
So, who are the lucky winners of the Obamacare
slush fund lottery? Freelancers CO-OP of New Jersey,
New Mexico Health Connections, Midwest Members
Health in Iowa and Nebraska, Common Ground
Healthcare Cooperative in Wisconsin, Freelancers
CO-OP of Oregon, Montana Health Cooperative, and
Freelancers Health Service Corporation in New York.
You won’t be surprised to learn that the
Freelancers Union — the largest CO-OP loan
beneficiary to date, with a total
$341 million subsidy – is a left-wing outfit
founded by a self-described “labor entrepreneur” and
MacArthur “genius.”
Sara Horowitz has already snagged countless
grants from the city and state of New York, the
liberal Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Horowitz and Obama served together, along with
former green jobs czar Van Jones, as advisers for
the progressive think tank Demos — which in turn
partnered with fraud-ridden community organizers
ACORN and Project Vote. She also runs a political
action committee called “Working Today” that
crusades for an expanded government safety net.
Crowing about the CO-OP loan from her fellow
progressive warrior, Horowitz exulted: “It’s
like venture capital for health care.” Or more
accurately, to borrow South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim
DeMint’s phrase,
venture socialism.
While Horowitz plots to rope in 200,000 new
clients, existing customers
protested in The New York Times over lousy
customer service and abrupt changes that resulted in
“higher premiums, higher deductibles and more holes
than their current plans.” Horowitz is more
preoccupied with ensuring that the
“social-purpose company” meets social and
environmental justice goals than with customer
needs.
Another of the Obamacare slush fund winners,
Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative in Wisconsin,
scooped up a $56.4 million federal loan. The group
describes itself as a “coalition of religious groups
and other organizations.” Its pedigree is much more
radical than that. As the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted, Common Ground
“is the Milwaukee affiliate of the Industrial Areas
Foundation, founded in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, a famed
community organizer and author of ‘Rules for
Radicals.’ The organization, based in Chicago, bills
itself as the oldest and largest community
organizing network.”
The Industrial Areas Foundation was funded largely by the Gamaliel Foundation, which employed Obama in Chicago. As I first reported in 2009, Gamaliel’s Gregory Galluzzo wrote that he “met with Barack on a regular basis,” that Obama “acknowledged publicly that he had been the director of a Gamaliel affiliate,” and that “we are honored and blessed by the connection between Barack and Gamaliel.” No kidding. As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson put it: “These grants/loans reek of political payola.”
Cronies reap. Taxpayers weep.
Creators
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Copyright 2012