Shameless Healthcare Cronyism Exposed in the State of Connecticut

Liberty Blitzkrieg ^ | 02 June 2016 | Michael Krieger

[Lorianne]

The best way to describe Obama’s entire sleazy reign is to liken it to a Potemkin village. Everything he’s done was designed for appearances as opposed to results. Actually, that’s not really true. Everything was done to help further enrich a handful of crony insiders while appearing to be working in the public interest.

One of the best examples of this is Obamacare. Superficially, more people have coverage, which sounds great in soundbites for propaganda purposes. Unfortunately, as I pointed out in the post, The Health Insurance Scam – “Coverage” Doesn’t Mean Affordability or Access:

Obama administration officials, urging people to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, have trumpeted the low premiums available on the law’s new marketplaces.

But for many consumers, the sticker shock is coming not on the front end, when they purchase the plans, but on the back end when they get sick: sky-high deductibles that are leaving some newly insured feeling nearly as vulnerable as they were before they had coverage.

“The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor,” said David R. Reines, 60, of Jefferson Township, N.J., a former hardware salesman with chronic knee pain. “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.”

This is textbook Obama. You take a problem and pretend to fix it, but at the end of the day all you have created is a novel scheme to further enrich and empower entrenched interests.

[Wolfie]

“Coverage” Doesn’t Mean Affordability or Access

It's not supposed to, in any format. It's supposed to guarantee insurance company profits.

[eyeamok]

“The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor,”

Insurance is supposed to be for unforeseeable catastrophic events, NOT REGULAR VISITS for your hang nail. PAY YOUR OWN OFFICE VISIT and quit WHINING.

The cost of Medical Care for CASH Paying Customers is still very reasonable. I wish I could get my $10,000 Deductible Plan Back, it was only $200 per month for My wife,myself,and daughter. They covered 100% after Deductible. I NEVER Spent more than $1000 per Year on Regular Care.

[eyeamok]

WARNING, This will make you dizzy!!

When Anthem’s plan to acquire Cigna was being negotiated in early 2015, Connecticut’s Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy appointed Katharine Wade as his state’s insurance commissioner: She was a longtime Cigna lobbyist whose father-in-law works at a law firm that lobbies for the company, whose mother and brother previously worked at Cigna, and whose husband still does. She was also a top official of the major lobbying group for the state’s health insurance industry. As commissioner, she appointed a top deputy who worked at Cigna and she had a former longtime Cigna employee serve as an agency counsel in the merger review. As Wade continues to oversee Connecticut’s review of Cigna’s merger, she recently secured a position chairing a healthcare policy committee for insurance commissioners across the country. Malloy’s decision to appoint Wade to such a powerful regulatory post on the eve of the merger was not made in a vacuum. It came after employees of Cigna, its lobbying firm Robinson & Cole and Anthem delivered more than $1.3 million to national and state political groups affiliated with Malloy, including the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), the Connecticut Democratic Party, Malloy’s own gubernatorial campaign and a political action committee supporting Connecticut Democrats.

[chit*chat]

Mark Levin told his audiences that insurance and care are not the same. No back lash when Dems snuck it through,

[cgbg]

Malloy is running the state as a criminal enterprise.

This is not a surprise since the guy is a criminal thug.

When I heard the state budget was $20B dollars I thought it was an error since the state only has $3.6M people.

That means the state is spending $6K per man, woman and child in the state. Since only $1.9M of those folks are employed that means the state is spending nearly $12K per year, a thousand dollars a month, per employed person in the state.

Great scam—the endgame will not be pretty but Malloy will have taken his ill-gotten kickbacks to a warmer climate before the state officially declares bankruptcy.