Last night, Byron York reported on how a program in the national health care law meant to provide health coverage to early retirees had already spent $2 billion, handing out money to unions, state public employees and major corporations even though the program’s $5 billion allocation was supposed to last until 2014.
During a Friday Energy and Commerce hearing, Republicans questioned Steven Larsen, the director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, about the quick burn rate.
“It’s a reflection of the success of the program,” Larsen boasted.
He insisted that the program’s funding would be sufficient to finance it through 2014, even though he acknowledged that the Department of Health and Human Services had stopped taking new applications.
Touting the fact that wealthy corporations, unions and other groups are willing to accept handouts from the federal government is sort of like a electronics store giving away all its Blu Ray players for free, and bragging of extraordinary sales figures.
