By Seth Mandel 11.07.2013 At times it seems like the sheer magnitude of bad news about ObamaCare can redound to its own benefit. Its easy for individual pieces of bad news to get lost in the sea of failure that has characterized the Obama administrations signature achievement. That might be the case with the most important story to appear about ObamaCare this week, from Tuesdays edition of the New York Times. The paper reported that the Obama administration has ruled that the federal health-care program be exempted from the category of laws considered federal health care programs. Now, this is obviously dishonest: the federal government is running insurance exchanges, funding health-care subsidies under the law, and employing federal workers to help manage the lawall of which are clearly federal health care programs. So why would the administration choose not to label them according to observable reality? Because, as the Times explained, this decisionbelieve it or notexempts ObamaCare from kickback restrictions and anti-fraud protections: The surprise decision, disclosed last week, exempts subsidized health insurance from a law that bans rebates, kickbacks, bribes and certain other financial arrangements in federal health programs, stripping law enforcement of a powerful tool used to fight fraud in other health care programs, like Medicare. [Excerpt] Read more: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/07/obamacares-crony-capitalism-worse-than-we-thought/ Thusly this administration is prepared to justify kickbacks, bribes and other criminal actions it will be performing.
