The Unhealthy Truth About Obamacare's Contractors (Fraud, Corruption)

Forbes ^ | November 10, 2013 | Udayan Gupta

[PJ-Comix]

On July 16 of this year, Sarah Kliff posted a prescient piece on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog. The post, “Meet Serco, the private firm getting $1.2 billion to process your Obamacare application,” reported that 90 percent of Serco’s U.S. business is with the federal government and that the 25-year-old firm pretty much owes its existence to government contracting. In this case, Serco won a contract that will pay it $114 million in 2013 and that eye-popping number of $1.2 billion over the next five years. According to one outside study, it’s the largest single contract for implementing the Affordable Care Act, or as it’s both affectionately and derisively known, Obamacare. But in a city where everyone loves to talk but apparently few listen much, the piece must have mostly gone unread. The implementation, as we now know, has been a disaster.

Kliff also noted that Serco’s experience is in paper-pushing, not healthcare. Serco is a British company, but has been doing business in the U.S. for nearly a quarter century. Serco lobbyist Alan Hill emphasized to Kliff that the U.S. arm operates as a separate company with a strict firewall, given the sensitive nature of its operations, which include processing millions of visa applications for the State and Homeland Security departments.

[PJ-Comix]

But Serco is also a company with a checkered present. In July, Britain placed its contracts with Serco Group and another firm under parliamentary review for charging for prisoner-related services it did not provide. The Serious Fraud Office has now launched an inquiry into the overcharging on electronic tagging contracts for offenders, following the claims by the justice secretary. In August, police were called in to investigate fraudulent behavior by Serco staff—falsifying documents under a seven year £285 million contract that calls for delivering prisoners to court on time. Last month, Serco CEO Chris Hyman resigned weeks before the launch of a government investigation into the alleged fraud.

Yeah, enter your personal information on the ObamaCare website and give these crooks access to it. BTW, what's with the Obama Regime awarding huge contracts to foreign corporations?

[TigersEye]

0bamaCare is waste and fraud.

[Logical me]

The communists Democratic Party with its leader King Obama is the most corrupt bunch of asses this Country has ever had in its life. Trillions will have gone down the toilet and we will get nothing but a dictatorship unless we change course and NOW, not next year but now. Don’t think we can do it.

[Jim Robinson]

Repeal the unconstitutional POS. Impeach the communist bastard!!

[basil]

I’ll vote for that!

[abclily]

And I’ll vote for that!

[MadIsh32]

One of my favorite things to read over this whole debacle is how many experts are in the US on the delivery of highly complex federal IT systems.

I am sure everyone on FR could run a gov’t contracting firm just fine

[MadIsh32]

Serco and CGI, much like BAE Systems (which has billions of contracts with DOD and the intel community but is itself a British Company) all have subsidiaries that are American based and run by Americans.

The British, or Canadian version of these firms might as well be totally different companies because of the multiple walls and silos these firms have up between the US based companies and the foreign owners.

Another example of low information, everyone is an expert on Federal contracting, in your post.

[justa-hairyape]

Reads like a CIA front company.

[MadIsh32]

Serco is not a CIA cover company.

Those companies generally have multi names (McClater and Associates is a popular one the agency likes to use) and have no foreign connections.

Serco is your run of the mill Federal contractor

[justa-hairyape]

Thanks for the clarification. So the CIA has never opened up shop in a foreign land ? Thought that was a given.

[MadIsh32]

They certainly have, but Serco is *not* a CIA front.

CIA front operations tend to be very low key, things you would forget easily. They wouldn’t be a 1.2B dollar company, they’d be much smaller, private, and on the down low. They do not want anything high profile or anything that draws attention