A Decade On, Freelancers Union Founder Sara Horowitz Takes Her Fight Mainstream
Just guessing she doesn't care for men, as does most of the other women in Obama's circle...
Posted on 03/02/2013 5:14:09 AM PST by IbJensen
NEW YORK CITY, March 1, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – An insurance company known for not keeping its contractual obligations has received $340 million in federal loans to set up a health care exchange under ObamaCare. Critics say the only apparent criteria for the loan is the fact that the company is led by a friend of Barack Obama during his community organizer days. She is also a former leader of a George Soros-funded politically radical organization.
The confluence of incompetence, cronyism, and political donations have many asking if the arrangement is above-board – and what that signals about America's future after the health care industry is rearranged.
Congress has opened an inquiry into the eligibility of President Obama’s close friend Sara Horowitz and her embattled health insurance company to receive $340 million in taxpayer-funded loans.
Horowitz, a former labor lawyer and community organizer, heads the Freelancers’ Union and the related Freelancers’ Insurance Company (FIC).
Despite the name, the Freelancers’ Union is not a union. It is the parent organization of Horowitz’s for-profit health insurance company, which serves 200,000+ customers, mostly freelancers who are ineligible for benefits through their employers.
FIC has been rated the “worst” insurer in New York for the past two years by state regulators, and has weathered numerous public relations and customer service crises since it launched in 2008. The company is so unpopular it has spawned its own hate blog, “Upset Freelancers’ Union Members,” where those who buy their healthcare from FIC meet to complain, strategize, and give each other tips on how to navigate labyrinthine restrictions and try to get results from the notoriously frustrating customer service hotline.
In 2011, the New York State Insurance Department ranked FIC dead last in customer satisfaction among insurers. Despite its relatively small size, FIC had the most complaints of all the state’s insurance providers. Last year, FIC again ranked “worst” in complaints. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says FIC’s complaint rate is more than seven times the national average.
In half the complaints lodged against FIC by its customers, the insurance department ruled that “the health insurer did not comply with statutory or contractual obligations.”
None of this stopped the Obama administration from handing Horowitz a $340 million loan from the American taxpayers to start ObamaCare health care cooperatives.
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Horowitz’s loan is the single largest payout given under a little-known ObamaCare program that will pay about $2 billion to establish 24 such co-ops, which will compete against private insurers and state health insurance exchanges.
The tax-free loans are administrated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Consumer Insurance Information and Oversight (CCIIO).
Horowitz’s payday has raised eyebrows in Washington, leading some to question the screening process for loan applicants, and fueling criticisms of cronyism in the White House.
Horowitz is a longtime close friend of Obama’s. When he was in the Illinois state senate, Horowitz and Obama worked together to launch the George Soros-funded liberal think tank Demos, a group that worked hand-in-hand with the controversial ACORN community organizing group, which Obama also worked alongside with its voter registration program, Project Vote.
Horowitz isn’t the only one getting the side-eye over her connections to Obama and subsequent taxpayer-funded payday. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that another recipient of a $56.4 million loan, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative in Wisconsin, “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 group got much of its initial funding from the Gamaliel Foundation, Obama’s former employer in Chicago.
“The question you have to ask, what [are] the screening criteria, if any, or on what basis are these awards based?” said Thomas P. Miller, a health care expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
It’s difficult to find concrete information about how CCIIO screened applicants for the co-op loans. The agency’s website says, “CO-OP applicants underwent background checks that included public records searches at the local, state, and national level as well as searches of federal debarment databases.”
Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson said he thought the main criterion was a previous connection to Obama. “The Saul Alinsky-affiliated, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative of Wisconsin was formed in August, 2011, just three short months prior to applying for the taxpayer money,” said Wilson. “In true Rules for Radicals fashion, Obama’s administration found this group worthy of receiving $56,416,000 in taxpayer largesse.”
“These grants/loans reek of political payola,” Wilson said.
(it won't)
So what?
I assure you that there are thousands of Republicans lined up for similar jobs in state exchanges.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie, therefore, you cannot make the pie smaller, it must grow.
Government money (federal, state, local) are so intertwined into our lives that we have become a soul-less society where so many depend on gov’t spending, it can never be untangled.
The local daycare depends on HeadStart money. The doctor’s office depends on Medicaid. The construction company depends on grants for libraries, parks, bridges and museums. The grocery store depends on food stamps. The electronics company depends on defense spending. The software company depends on Homeland Security.
The 48% that survive from gov’t funds is much larger than you think. It is not just the recipient, but the people who benefit when that recipient interacts with others.
Republican donors see the money and want a part of it. So, they support Republicans who will give them a piece of the action rather than eliminate the action altogether.
We are a soul-less society.
“Our friends will be rewarded” -—Valerie Jarrett.
Absurd comment. Have you ever heard of matter of degree? Do you think size matters? 340 mill for a tiny podunk insurance company is not like a doctor wanting to get paid.
The link opens to a page that says “Article not found.”
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Consumer Insurance Information and Oversight (CCIIO).
Gotta love these ninety eighty four designations. Oversight my pattootie.
theft and organized crime more like it.
A Decade On, Freelancers Union Founder Sara Horowitz Takes Her Fight Mainstream
Just guessing she doesn't care for men, as does most of the other women in Obama's circle...
It never was about saving money or giving Americans healthcare coverage. It’s about control; access to your banking information, implementing an implant program and taxing the population even further. What they don’t havetopayout they get to keep (or at least that’s what they probably thought). No doubt senior healthcare is going to be going down the tubes and the death rate going up at a younger age for them so that funds don’t haveto be expended on them. Think Star Trek episode # 96 where people are forced to kill themselves at age 60 to keep from having to be taken care of in their old age.
I am coming soon...and my reward is with me ~ Jesus Christ
unless you repent, Valerie your dont going to like yours.
well dang why cant Jim Rob make the posts editable. why cant i spell? why is this stupid thing called a smartphone?
Is that you Janie? (comet cleasner ad lady)
Democrats bring the Chicago and Detroit ways to the Nation... If you don't hate liberal elite liars, you're not paying attention.
Democrats bring the Chicago and Detroit ways to the Nation...
If you don't hate liberal elite liars, you're not paying attention.
Logan’s run comes to mind too
Great article
We have put multiple layers between physicians (and other providers) and patients. Each of those ‘layers’ costs money - lots of money.
We've centralized care to large hospitals and hospital corporations, within which there are often many people making 7 figure salaries - overseeing an ever growing bureaucracy that didn't need to exist in the first place, but which adds tremendous costs to medical care.
The electronic medical record is not about making health information more easily shared so that patients get better and more coordinated care. It's about control and auditing. Dr. Smith is charging for too many level four visits. Audit her. Dr. Stewart did too many hip replacements. Audit him. General Hospital had too many readmissions for heart failure. Fine them, and audit them.
The above is already happening. It's due to get much, much, much worse. In the end, it will make the horror stories you've heard from Europe seem like nothing.
AND, it won't make costs go down.
The above is how brain dead liberals see the world. The 'pie' concept works for liberals because it's the socialist idea that we all 'get to share'. That's bullsh*t... it's just one more way to phrase 'we get to steal what's yours' without making it sound like theft.
If you don't hate liberal lowlife thieves yet, you're not paying attention...
With the start of ‘Free” mandates like birth control on New York Health Insurance companies and pending regulations under Obamacare will they end up bankrupt? Will they be one more causality of failed economic policies like Circuit City, Woolworths, Readers Digest, Blockbuster, and Boarders books that Obama can add to his list of accomplishments? Well not to worry Obama has our backs on this one. Just six months into his presidency and nine months before the Democrats made Obamacare law he was meeting with his supporters. The purpose was to divvy up the windfall he expected from the Healthcare mandates.
The plan formulated was to create Healthcare Co-Ops to replace the taxpaying profit driven insurance companies he expected to be shovel ready soon after Obamacare was implemented. This in spite of his failures to pick winners in green energy and as Keiser Health stated most health insurers launched under the federal government over 40 years have gone bust and even Obama’s cabinet expects a 40% failure rate. So who has he picked to entrust the healthcare insurance of the millions in New York State? Someone you probably never heard of, Sara Horowitz. So who is she and what are her qualifications?
Sara Horowitz has the right stock for almost any Obama fleecing scheme. Her grandfather was vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers and her father a lawyer for the same. Like most garment workers daughters she received degrees from Cornell and Harvard specializing in law. Despite this handicap she managed to start her own union for Freelancers called the Portable Benefits Network to collect dues and offer health insurance to freelance workers. Sort of a union without any representation in any company or any say in wages or benefits.. As per Open secrets she contributed a mere $500 to Obama in September 2008. She could see her fortunes looking up and changed the name to Freelance Insurance Company. By June of 2009 she was meeting with Obama in the White House. Seeing the way to untold tax dollars her Freelancers PAC gave $2,000 to Democratic candidates in 2010. At the same time her trolling for Health care dollars lobbying firm was inoculated with $150,000. The end result of these investments was a $341 million dollar subsidy at zero or one percent interest to start a Co-Op in New York.
Obama who is not at fault for the poor economy, high gas prices and credit down grade has New York covered. He selected a faithful union lawyer, and a Democratic contributor with no medical experience to “invest” 341 million to see if she can run a nonprofit, non taxpaying Co-Op for the rest of us. It probably should be noted that when the freelancers union changed health plans before it was a fiasco and her union only has 25,000 members. Her union can rightly claim that the rates they charge are lower than other plans but they do not insure anyone over 65 years old. Could this be a harbinger of the New York Co-Op? Keeping costs down by not insuring shovel ready clients?
It is good to see that the Obama administration has our best interest at heart and will not let us down if those greedy insurance companies abandon us ahead of impending mandates according to plan.
Originally published 02/13/2012
Don’t forget defrauding the US taxpayer in order to pay off cronies and favorites. I don’t know for sure how these exchanges will work, but that could be where the stealing really happens. There are some people who are going to get very rich on obamacare.
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