Hatch, Grassley: Obama Admin Needs To Explain 'Unresolved Conflicts Of Interest At CMS

Daily Caller;
by Richard Pollock.

The acting head of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services has attracted the attention of two powerful senators, who are now demanding answers about whether Andy Slavitt has been compromised by personally accepting millions of dollars from the health industry.

In a letter issued Tuesday by Senators Orin Hatch and Chuck Grassley to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the lawmakers wrote that they are concerned “specifically with regard to the risk of conflicts of interest between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and UnitedHealth Group, its subsidies and its employees.”

The letter was first obtained by The Daily Caller.

As exclusively reported by TheDC earlier this week, when Slavitt joined CMS last year, the Obama administration quietly permitted him to redeem $4.8 million in health company stock without paying capital gains taxes. About half of the equities were in United Health Group stock where for 11 years Slavitt served as an executive in Optum, a UHG subsidiary.

United Health Group and its subsidiaries are deeply involved in Obamacare. Operationally, an Optum subsidiary called QSSI runs the troubled Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov.

The two senators were especially concerned about what they called “unresolved conflicts of interest” between the QSSI contract and Slavitt’s role as “one of the primary executives involved in fixing Healthcare.gov after its failed launch in October 2013.”

Optum also runs Obamacare health exchanges in five states while its parent, United Health Group, sells health-care insurance to millions of Obamacare customers in 12 states.

United Health Group reported that in 2013 it earned $30 billion in revenues just from Medicare and Medicaid, which Slavitt oversees.

Read More.

Thank You DC and Mr Pollock.

HHS Sec Burwell Recruits 'Faith' Leaders to Promote ObamaCare

CNSNews;

December 18, 2014 - 1:59 PM

By Penny Starr

(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell met with “faith organizations from across the country” last week to ask them to help people enroll in federal health care insurance plans created through the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

“We know that the most effective voices on helping folks learn about the Affordable Care Act are voices in their community and voices that they trust,” Burwell said to reporters following the “closed press” meeting on Friday.

“Faith leaders have a unique perspective. When someone in their congregation feels financial stress they know it," she said.

“When someone has a medical issue, they know it as well, and because faith leaders play such an important role in their communities and because they are the leaders that people trust in almost all setting, we view them as some of our most effective and important partners," Burwell said.

While addressing reporters, Burwell was flanked by two people who attended the meeting: Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, National Catholic Social Justice Lobby and Amy Cotton, senior policy manager at the National Council of Jewish Women.

Campbell supported liberal causes, including the reelection of President Barack Obama. In September, Campbell and other nun activists did theirthird tour to fight what they say is “dark money” from Charles and David Koch to GOP political campaigns.

According to its website, Cotton’s organization takes “a progressive stance on such issues as child welfare, women’s rights, and reproductive freedom.”

But when CNSNews.com asked HHS later to identify the names of the faith leaders and organizations that attended the meeting, the agency did not directly answer the question.

In addition, CNSNews.com asked HHS if any of those in attendance opposed the Obamacare mandate that requires payment and provision of contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs or whether Burwell or other HHS officials planned to meet with them.

An HHS official sent the following response via e-mail:

“Secretary Burwell met with faith leaders from across the country,” the statement said. “The group consisted of about 25 participants who spoke about families, their budgets, and the choices they have for obtaining quality, health coverage at a price they can afford.

“As Secretary Burwell said during the press conference: ‘Because faith leaders play such an important role in their communities – and because they are leaders that people trust – we view them as some of our most important, and effective partners,’" it said.

“HHS is in constant communication with faith groups and faith leaders who have a variety of beliefs, including those who are opposed to the provision,” the statement said.

The contraceptive mandate, which forces Catholics and others Christians to act against their faith by purchasing or providing those drugs, has resulted in more than 90 lawsuits.

When CNSNews.com asked at Friday’s event about their goal for the number of people signed up for Obamacare after this latest enrollment period – the deadline was Dec. 15 for Jan. 1 coverage with the final deadline of Feb. 15 providing coverage at a later date – Burwell said they hope to have 9.1 million people enrolled next year.

An HHS analysis released on Nov. 10 projected between 9 million and 9.9 million individuals enrolled in health insurance plans through the Obamacare exchange by the end of 2015. That's up to 4 million fewer people than estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in April.

Burwell noted in her remarks to the press that three quarters of the people shopping and buying on the federal marketplace right now are those who were already enrolled. She said that people who do not re-enroll in a different plan on their own will be automatically re- enrolled in their existing plan.

Thank You Ms Starr and CNS.

wiki; 1st Amendment

text:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

"The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights."

HHS is a Creation of Congress/Funded by Congress, and is therefore exercising the Bidding and Will of Congress, . . . but "Congress Shall Make NO Law" - like everything else with the left - only applies when and where it fits the left's agenda.

And since 'Social Justice' has also taken up squatter's rights on America's back in this one, if you'd like clarification on That:

Social Justice Defined

Harrrumph.

and CNSNews could use a donation or two. Hint. Hint.

Second Health Care Worker Contracts Ebola In Texas

weaselzippers;

And like the first nurse, she also tended to Thomas Eric Duncan.

Via ABC  News:

A second health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who tended to Thomas Eric Duncan as he died of Ebola has tested positive for the lethal virus and a hospital official said this morning that additional cases among the hospital’s health care workers is a “very real possibility.”

The unidentified health care worker reported a fever Tuesday and was isolated at the hospital, authorities said.

The preliminary Ebola test was run late Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and results were received at about midnight, authorities said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun confirmation testing.

The woman was put into isolation within 90 minutes, a Texas health official said.

The hospital held a news conference this morning and a spokesman said this may not be the last case to be found among the hospital’s staff.

“We are preparing contingencies for more and that is a very real possibility,” he said.

Thank You Zip and ABC.

State Dept. Won't Say If They Agree With Obama's Claim You Can't Get Ebola Sitting Near An Infected Person On A Bus
We'll Take That As A No.

HHS Secretary: "We Could Have Done Much Better" Containing Ebola
Well Maybe, if Damn Near the Entire U.S. Medical System under your supervision wasn't so damn busy selling Lobotomies to Everyone they can Catch at the behest of your Pharmaceutical Masters/Owners, . . . Christ, but you Far worse than useless, Corrupt Collectivists are getting old.

CDC Now Watching 125 People For Ebola Signs
Try watching 300 Million, in addition to all those people Obama Invited In from South of our Non-Existent Border.

Ebola Outbreak: UN Health Worker Dies In German Hospital

Should we wait another week to run this youtube clip, or is today "timely" enough?

It's not a soulless, T800 Android sent back from the future to hunt down and terminate 1 certain individual.

It wants Everyone.

And thanks to institutionalized Stupid at Every level of Govt. It's Here and They are responsible. Good luck trusting Them to deal with it.



Social Engineers.

Change Agents.

New HHS Sec Nominee Sylvia Burwell: Behind Govt. Shutdown Fiasco And Vince Foster Shenanigans

weaselzippers;

New HHS Sec Nominee Sylvia Burwell: Behind Govt. Shutdown Fiasco And Vince Foster Shenanigans

As Kathleen Sebelius resigned, Obama introduced his nominee to take her place- Sylvia Matthews Burwell.

Who is Burwell?

Burwell is the Director of the White House Office of Budget and Management. It was she who sent out the order to shut down the National Parks, the memorials, even the National Zoo’s Panda cam. It was on her order that elderly veterans were shut out from their memorials and others actually thrown out of their homes or businesses that happened to operate in National Parks.

At the time, remember how Democrats tried to blame the shutdown on Republicans, attacking any effort trying to reign in spending. The shutdown was targeted to hit the most people and to be as public as it could possibly be to maximize effect.

But now that the shutdown is over, according to Obama, apparently it was a wonderful thing, which Burwell did, to help reduce the deficit:

Mark Knoller        ✔ @markknoller

Follow

Pres Obama says during Govt shutdown last year, Burwell "was a rock, a steady hand on the wheel." & she helped reduce deficit $400-billion.

11:06 AM - 11 Apr 2014

You can’t make these things up.

Burwell has proper “globalist” background, having run the Gates Foundation, being on the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Trilateral Commission.

She was also President of Walmart, demonstrating once again the hypocrisy of the Left which attacks Republicans who corporate relationships, yet fails to note their own relationships. Those on the far left will have a small conniption at her over this little background tidbit, but like enough the rest of her resume will save her credibility.

But perhaps the creepiest thing in her resume is her connection to the Vince Foster case:

According to the Free Beacon:

In July 1995, Burwell (then Sylvia Mathews) was one of several key aides questioned by the Senate Whitewater Committee regarding the death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster.

Foster’s death was officially ruled a suicide. The Clinton White House eventually admitted to misleading investigators about how senior officials had seized and disposed of files relating to the first couple’s controversial investments in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed real estate venture.

Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers admitted that then-White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who had recovered documents relating to the Whitewater controversy from Foster’s office after his death, did not turn over the documents to the Clinton family’s personal attorney, contrary to what White House officials had claimed. Nussbaum had actually given the documents to Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, who placed them in a White House safe for five days before being turned over to the family attorney.

Under questioning, Sylvia Mathews and her colleagues denied impeding a police investigation into Foster’s death after his body was found in a northern Virginia park. According to the New York Times, Mathews testified “in laborious detail about what she had found in Mr. Foster’s garbage on the night he died.”

Having experience dealing with disaster and cover-ups from the Clinton administration should help prepare her for this present train wreck of a regime. Some like John McCain seemed fine with Burwell. Others, like Jeff Sessions, less so.

“I am concerned that director Burwell may have been chosen because the president believed her to be another political loyalist who would toe the party line,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, in a statement.

“Ms. Burwell has a comparatively thin resume for the demands now placed on this position – she has never run anything on the scale of HHS – and, during her short stint as budget director, she did more to obscure the nation’s poor financial state than to illuminate it.”

Thank You WZ, Free Beacon, and Nickarama.

And for those unfamiliar with the Vince Foster/Hillary Clinton business;

from What Really Happened;

THE CLINTON BODY COUNT

Vincent Foster

White House Counsel

died: 7/21/93Found dead in Ft. Marcy Park in Washington, DC, of a supposed suicide by gunshot. A suicide note was supposedly found a few days later, torn into several pieces, in his briefcase, after his office had been entered by white house staff and materials removed.

The gun which he supposedly used to kill himself was reported to be still in his hand, but the person who first found the body reports that there was no gun at that time. Many irregularities surround the death and the investigation of it.

Foster was also from Hope, Ark., like Clinton, and also worked for the Rose Law firm. Foster had intimate knowledge of the Clintons' personal finances. Foster was involved in an investigation of their finances, and reportedly made a phone call to Hillary Clinton, in Los Angeles, just hours before his death.

Recently, the signed report of M.E. Dr. Donald Haut was uncovered at the National Archives, proving that Foster had a previously unreported gunshot wound to his neck.

Finally, an FBI memo has surfaced dated the dayafter the date of the official autopsy, in which the autopsist informs the FBI that there was NO exit wound.

HT to nachumlist.com

The Hillary Clinton Dead Pool