So Obamacare is turning into a cash cow for more than just the drug industry that helped write it.
The cash cow gaining attention today is the costly proces — which is very well funded by taxpayers — of setting up the state-level exchanges Obamacare mandates. Politico has the big piece on this today. Here’s the heart of the piece:
More than $300 million in exchange grants has already flowed into the states since the Affordable Care Act passed. That number will grow exponentially in the coming months, as states move from the initial steps of passing exchange legislation to the more lucrative task of setting them up.
For health consultants and information technology vendors, it’s already shaping up to be a gold mine.
Michael Cannon at Cato picks out one of the characters in this exchange racket: George W. Bush’s HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, whose consulting firm is running around to gobble up this taxpayer lucre. Meanwhile, another Bush HHS Secretary and health-care consultant, Tommy Thompson joins the club of revolving-door K Streeters getting space at HuffPo for their industry talk.
What I find most interesting is the Left’s reaction to this Obamacare profiteering. You see, I’ve been nearly alone in pointing out that Pro-Obamacare Republicans stand to profit from the law. The rest of the MSM and the Left have ignored this inconvenient truth, which crashes against their narrative that the legislative fight was “reformers” vs. industry shills.
Here’s what Igor Volsky of the Center for American Progress wrote in 2009:
And here‘s Volsky praising Thompson for opposing Obamacare repeal.
But here’s what Volsky says today about Leavitt and Thompson:
