HHS Accused of Crony Capitalism and Coverup

“HHS has contracted with a subsidiary of a private health care company to help build and police the very exchanges in which that company will be competing for business. The person who ran the government entity that awarded that contract has since accepted a position with a different subsidiary of that same company. An insurance industry insider (speaking on the condition of anonymity) says that HHS, in an attempt to hide this unseemly contract from public view until after the election, encouraged the company to hide the transaction from the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

“In January, HHS awarded Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI) what the Hill describes as “a large contract to build a federal data services hub to help run the complex federal health insurance exchange.””

“QSSI would have access to valuable data. The Obama administration likes to compare Obamacare’s prospective insurance exchanges to websites like Travelocity and Expedia, but the comparison is inapt. Travelocity and Expedia don’t regulate airlines, stipulate the length of runways, or transfer money from younger passengers to older ones. In truth, Obamacare’s federal exchanges will be an extremely complicated technical endeavor to set up and run, as (among other things) they would involve compiling massive amounts of risk-selection data on individual Americans. In addition to raising extraordinary privacy concerns, the data involved would be like gold to insurers. To quote my source, “If you can capture this data, you’re going to win.””

“But it’s more problematic to hire a subsidiary of one of those insurance companies as an architect and policeman of the exchanges through which the Obama administration intends to have this abundant taxpayer money flow, more problematic still that Obama’s first head of the CCIIO may have profited personally from the venture, and most problematic of all that HHS may have told a private company to violate federal securities law in order to aid Obama’s reelection prospects.”

The Sebelius Coverup

Obamacare’s insurance exchanges need scrutiny.

Dec 10, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 13 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/sebelius-coverup_664285.html

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