Daily Archives: 26 August 2009

Firms with Obama ties profit from health push

More change we can believe in.

“President Barack Obama’s push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama’s 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama’s campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama’s campaign, and Axelrod’s son Michael and Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe work there.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

Obamacare = massive loss of privacy

“Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled ‘Administrative Simplification,’ the bill sets new ‘standards’ for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will ‘enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . . ‘ In addition, they will ‘enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.’

What is envisioned is a ‘machine-readable health plan beneficiary card’ that, in addition to information about a person’s medical history, will contain checking-account or credit-card information, so as to allow electronic payments and, if a person is lucky, occasional remittances. Since under the proposed legislation everyone would be required to have health insurance, all Americans would have to provide this information.” (Read more from nationalreview.com)