This is Betsy McCaughey writing for Investors Business Daily:
... The Obama administration granted a whopping $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange. That money is not for bandages, surgery, nurses and doctors to care for the sick. Nor is it for insurance plans, though $910 million could buy generous coverage for at least 113,000 people!
Shockingly, the $910 million is slated for bureaucracy, including rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director) and contracts for computer equipment, public relations and "outreach."
Outreach is the largest expenditure and where the real monkey business occurs....
What is known so far suggests that California politicians are exploiting health reform to enroll millions of the uninsured in the Democratic Party and fill the coffers of left-wing interest groups with taxpayer money.
Here are the facts to back up that cynical picture:
- California lawmakers passed a law (Senate Bill 35) requiring that voter registration be part of the health insurance exchange.
- Last month, Covered California announced $37 million in grants to 48 organizations to build public awareness about the opening of the health exchange on Oct. 1.
- Of the 48 organizations that got grants, only a handful are health-care related. The California NAACP received $600,000 to do door-to-door canvassing and presentations at community organizations.
- Service Employees International Union, which says its mission is "economic justice," received two grants totaling $2 million to make phone calls, robo-calls and go door to door.
- The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO got $1 million for door-to-door, one-on-one education and social networking. It describes its role as "engaging in both organizing and political campaigns, electing pro-union and pro-worker candidates."
- Community Health Councils, a California organization with a long history of political activism against fracking, for-profit hospitals, state budget cuts and oil exploration, got $1 million to conduct presentations at community and neighborhood meetings and one-to-one sessions.
These organizations, closely allied with the Democratic Party, are being funded by your tax dollars to conduct "outreach," meaning the kind of phone banking and door-to-door canvassing that activists do to turn out the vote. They will turn out the uninsured to enroll on the exchanges and in the Democratic Party....
