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ObamaCare — did someone mention “crony capitalism”? [Darleen Click]

Not only an unprecedented expansion of Nanny Government, but more details on how certain industries have taken Federal carrots.

For a law that supposedly sticks it to big business, President Obama’s health care overhaul sure has a lot of industries counting on it for profits. In recent weeks, plenty of new evidence suggests Obamacare was a boondoggle for special interests.

Hedge fund honcho Larry Robbins told the crowd at the prominent Sohn Investment Conference last week to buy hospital stocks. Obamacare, Robbins argued, would boost profits for the industry.

Insurers might be in the same boat. A Bloomberg Government study released last week found insurers would lose out on a trillion dollars in revenue between 2013 and 2020 if the Supreme Court struck down Obamacare in its entirety. Most of the trillion at stake comes from federal subsidies created by Obamacare. […]

Since the Obamacare debates began in the spring of 2009, we’ve known drug lobbyists had a privileged seat at the table, but we didn’t know exactly what the drug industry got from the “reform” — and just how the industry repaid Democrats.

Now the veil is lifting. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee spent the last year pressuring the White House to turn over documents relating to drug industry-White House negotiations. Last week, committee Republicans began releasing the details.

There is this whole Left-liberal meme about business and corporations as Boogey-men extraordinaire; people who will eat your children, rape your grannies, poison your dog and starve you to death if it weren’t for SuperFederalMan watching over you.

(Liberty is so over-rated, please sign here to exchange it for our benevolent cradle-to-grave running of your life)

But it isn’t the private sector that can put people in jail, organize a military, seize a business’s property via “interpretation” or reward one person’s property to political allies. Big Business is, at worst, a pale wannabe to a statist government.

Pelosi said the bill had to be passed before we would be allowed to know what’s in it.

And what is in it is as bad as we imagined.

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Related: Delphi Salaried Retirees

21 Replies to “ObamaCare — did someone mention “crony capitalism”? [Darleen Click]”

  1. happyfeet says:

    I hadn’t seen this newsy bit of news

    P&G plans to move its skin, cosmetics and personal care business from Cincinnati to Singapore, dealing a blow to the headquarters city.*

    omg isn’t that the exact same singapore where Eduardo Saverin fled? I think it is.

    Someone get Boehnerfag a tissue.

  2. TRHein says:

    As always hf, the real story is quite different from your snarky comments allude to.

  3. TRHein says:

    *what* fit in there somewhere

  4. EBL says:

    MAY 24, 2012
    IN THE MAIL: From Kevin Williamson, The Dependency Agenda. “Each year, the United States spends $65,000 per poor family to ‘fight poverty’ – in a country in which the average family income is just under $50,000. Meanwhile, most of that money goes to middle-class and upper-middle-class families, and the current U.S. poverty rate is higher than it was before the government began spending trillions of dollars on anti-poverty programs.”

    Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:00 am

    Hey

    Are you benefiting from these poverty programs? Who is getting the money?

  5. leigh says:

    I imagine the bulk of that money is for healthcare programs such as Medicaid. Food stamp (SNAP) programs aren’t particularily generous. WIC is for women with infants and children and covers milk and juices and some other items. Cash assistance is limited in most cases and caps out over two years which is considered a lifetime benefit and can’t be claimed again in the future. Welfare programs are administered by the State in which you live and vary widely. School lunches may be included, too. There are also assistance programs for the needy that assist with paying utilities.

    On the surface, it all sounds like the people who are receiving assistance are sitting around eating fried chicken and watching Jerry Springer on their new Plasma tvs. The truth is: not so much.

  6. TRHein says:

    $50,000 isn’t middle class? God help me then. And since I am not recieving Medicaid, Food Stamps, WIC, Cash Assistance, School lunch or help paying my utilities just what are you implying by saying its not going to folks sitting around with their 11 children eating fried chicken and watching Jerry Springer?

  7. leigh says:

    $50K is indeed middle class. Persons receiving government assistance are generally not even close to middle class, at least in my experience.

  8. Jeff G. says:

    Pablo, I’ve noted that stat before. I think I even posted it on facebook. It’s astounding. And deeply, deeply troubling.

  9. Jeff G. says:

    On the surface, it all sounds like the people who are receiving assistance are sitting around eating fried chicken and watching Jerry Springer on their new Plasma tvs. The truth is: not so much.

    Much more than you think.

  10. leigh says:

    There are always going to people who abuse the system, Jeff. Those fuckers need to be rooted out because the programs are for the Needy, not the Greedy.

  11. happyfeet says:

    50 thou a year will buy a lot of cupcakes

  12. LTC John says:

    Jeff and Pablo,

    Hence my slow burning anger toward the looters and moochers – I crawled up from a little bit poor up to stolid middle class kulak and didn’t take a dime of food stamps, public aid or whatnot. My parents actually inculcated a bit o’ the old Weberian Protestant Work Ethic in me.

    I would have died of shame taking my grain dole from the aedile’s booth, while still able bodied and working as much as I could.

  13. Jeff G. says:

    There are always going to people who abuse the system, Jeff.

    It’s not abuse. It’s within the parameters. They’ve learned to play the system, not “abuse” it. Unless by abuse you mean abuse the intent. But then you’re operating outside the bounds of the pragmatic and the self-interested.

    Which is the problem with the programs the way they’re structured in the first place.

    Really. Click the zerohedge link Pablo posted.

  14. Pablo says:

    It’s not abuse. It’s within the parameters. They’ve learned to play the system, not “abuse” it.

    In a lotta, lotta cases it’s the family business, for generations now. It’s just how you do things.

  15. leigh says:

    I read it. I see them around here quite a bit. Me, I just live in genteel poverty.

  16. Pablo says:

    I would have died of shame taking my grain dole from the aedile’s booth, while still able bodied and working as much as I could.

    Same here. But shame has gone out of style.

  17. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I would have died of shame taking my grain dole from the aedile’s booth

    Which is why the Aediles and Tribunes of the People work so assiduously to weed out shame and cultivate entitlement. It’s a privilege to be on the dole!

  18. Pablo says:

    It’s patriotic!

Comments are closed.