Screw the rich! (Unless, like, they’re our rich. In which case, cater to them). “Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district”:
Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.
Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.
For instance, Boboquivari’s restaurant in Pelosi’s district in San Francisco got a waiver from Obamacare. Boboquivari’s advertises $59 porterhouse steaks, $39 filet mignons and $35 crab dinners.
Then, there’s Café des Amis, which describes its eating experience as “a timeless Parisian style brasserie” which is “located on one of San Francisco’s premier shopping and strolling boulevards, Union Street,” according to the restaurant’s Web site.
“Bacchus Management Group, in partnership with Perry Butler, is bringing you that same warm, inviting feeling, with a distinctive San Francisco spin,” the Web site reads. Somehow, though, the San Francisco upper class eatery earned itself a waiver from Obamacare because it apparently cost them too much to meet the law’s first year requirements.
The reason the Obama administration says it has given out waivers is to exempt certain companies or policyholders from “annual limit requirements.” The applications for the waivers are “reviewed on a case by case basis by department officials who look at a series of factors including whether or not a premium increase is large or if a significant number of enrollees would lose access to their current plan because the coverage would not be offered in the absence of a waiver.” The waivers don’t allow a company to permanently refrain from implementing Obamacare’s stipulations, but companies can reapply for waivers annually through 2014.
Café Mason, a diner near San Francisco’s Union Square, got a waiver too. When The Daily Caller asked the manager about the waiver and how the president’s new sweeping federal health care law was affecting his restaurant, he hung up the phone. The Franciscan Crab restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco got a waiver. Its menu features entrees ranging from about $15 to $60. The Franciscan’s general manager didn’t return TheDC’s requests for comment.
Four-star hotel Campton Place got one too, as did Hotel Nikko San Francisco, which describes itself as “four-diamond luxury in the heart of the city.” Tru Spa, which Allure Magazine rated the “best day spa in San Francisco,” received an Obamacare waiver as well.
Before hanging up on TheDC, Tru Spa’s owner said new government health care regulations, both the federal-level Obamacare and new local laws in Northern California, have “devastated” the business. “It’s been bad for us,” he said, without divulging his name, referring to the new health care restrictions.
This isn’t really surprising. I mean, rich Dems, for all their ostensible redistributionist impulses, can’t themselves be expected to do without. After all, it’s harder than it looks giving away other people’s money — and such elite labor deserves at least some special dispensation, does it not?
Quips Ed Morrissey, “Just remember, ObamaCare is here to protect the poor. And Nancy Pelosi is here to protect all of the little people … who serve the rich.”
(thanks to JD)
Orwell had some quote about pigs. I think it works for this.
Waivers are the new “earmarks”, or should I say join the old earmarks as instruments of patronage…
Which, oddly, they have in common with rich Socialist money-changers (accused of rape), if by “oddly” you mean naturally:
It is to chuckle.
Clearly, taxes need to be raised. On other people.
Then, Mrs. Palin made the following unhelpful remarks: ‘Unflippingbelievable! No, wait, it is believable,….”
http://tinyurl.com/66ugu86
And right on queue, MSM gives us the GOP front runner due to fund raising prowess: http://tinyurl.com/3bwrflp
After all, who is better equipped to save us from Obamacare than Mitt Romney?
I can’t wait until someone asks her about this.
From Grover Cleveland’s Second Inaugural Address delivered March 4, 1893 (The in-eloquence of the thing may be difficult to bear after the soaring oratory of Obama, but try and forgive):
Read the whole thing, I found it amazing that 95% of a speech given over a hundred years ago has so much relevance today.
MSM gives us the GOP front runner due to fund raising prowess
Because that’s what this country really needs right now: an Establishment figure who’s popular with the moneyed interests.
You may want to look at Bill Quick’s view on this.
If SF frelled itself, that isn’t my or anyone else’s problem. Special treatment is special treatment, and bad law is bad law, no matter the circumstances.
IF this Obamacare is full of so much sweetness and light, why are most of the Democratic supporting union thugs and all trying to get waivers from being under it?
Gee, they must know something else about it.
I hate
DemocratsSocialists.