Koch Industries Slaps Health Care Law With One Hand While Holding the Other Hand Out
Koch Industries has been at the helm of all opposition and lies around the Affordable Care Act. Koch Industries pushed back against the claims in Jane Mayer's article with a fact-check on their positions. One section, entitled "Government-Run Healthcare", states their position:
Innovation drives our country – and in the healthcare field it brings us better treatments, improved procedures and cures for life-threatening diseases. Government takeover of healthcare may stymie innovation, affect medical research negatively and reduce the reimbursements our leading research institutions receive.
Of course, the Affordable Care Act is not government-run healthcare, but the Kochs have been the largest moneybags behind that particular impression. So we get it, right? The Kochs believe insurance companies should discriminate and do whatever they want to do to maximize profits on the backs of Americans' health. You'd think that would mean they'd reject any benefit of the Affordable Care Act.
You'd think. Today, Wonk Room reports this:
Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the “first round of applicants accepted into the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program,” a $5 billion program established by the new health care law to help employers and states “maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare.” According to the agency, “nearly 2,000 employers, representing large and small businesses, State and local governments, educational institutions, non-profits, and unions” applied and have been accepted into the program and “will begin to receive reimbursements for employee claims this fall.”
Ironically, one of those employers is the oil, chemicals, and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries, which as Lee Fang has reported, has also spent millions of dollars opposing reform:
They hate it until they love it. Whatevs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCQ-VfPeAwc&fe...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Are these the same guys who placed the put options on the airline stocks after 9/11. What sick bastards. Profiting off the misery of people. Capitalism for the poor. Socialism for the rich. Privatize the profits. Socialize the losses. It's amazing what kind of sway they hold over the population. They've got it figured out.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
for the legality of the use of formaldehyde in this country, even though it's an absolute carcinogen. Always, always wash any new clothing you buy before you wear it, as it will likely have been treated with formaldehyde for its long ride here from China, Thailand, etc. It's to prevent mold.
one's money where one's mouth is. Always the corporate welfare. Why don't we fire back about this? They want no benefits for real people, at all, ever, but billions for rich corporations. Are we too damn polite to mention this in public? Obviously DC isn't going to get the word out. They will never be disloyal to their employers. We should be the one's doing it. Why aren't we?
where his mouth is. the smart investor, per danny devito, in "Other People's Money", uses, as the title states, other people's money. cuts down on risk of loss.
that's why the kochs are the kochs, and we aren't.
don't.
and the MSM (and most assuredly the medical industry) conveniently forgets, or doesn't know, is that the government is already (and has been for decades) intimately involved in health care. where do you think the grant money comes from, that funds a very large chunk of medical research in this country? i'll give you a hint: think D.C.
these grants go to medical schools/hospitals/individual scientists, to fund basic and advanced research, on all kinds of health issues, from drugs to protocals, the successful ones make it to your medicine cabinet, or possibly in your body; paid for by the US taxpayer, and profiting private industry. essentially, the for-profit health industry owes me a free heart transplant.
as well, millions in taxpayer dollars go to support the country's medical schools, directly and indirectly. without those funds, most of the students couldn't afford medical school.
i'm not suggesting this is a bad thing, merely noting that the vaunted "innovative private sector" gets innovative with huge wads of taxpayer dollars.
by whining about how much research and development costs. They just don't mention that they don't pay for it. They import many, many drugs from China, and reap the profits. It's American exceptionalism that allows them to do this with a straight face.
Well this should bode well for a good reelection campaign message.
On second thought maybe not.
The Dem's wouldn't want to point out what utter craven hypocrites the Koch brothers are and cause any hard feelings or anything.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
"Remember the Kochs" The Koch Brothers were happy to work their stuff under cover and unseen. Their $millions are invested in controlling pols and the minds of as much of the population as possible. The $millions become $billions and they are among the richest in the world. They believe they own America. They fear nothing but the light of day. Don't forget their names.
ljmel
Take a good look at Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and Germany during the same period when the Fascist Mussolini and the National Socialist (Nazi) Adolph Hitler were coming to power in both countries. Look carefully as you see the wealthy industrialists gaining power and controlling the newspapers and the media. Tell me if it doesn't remind you of the Koch brothers and of Fox News under the direction of Roger Ailes. Is it a coincidence? Is it really?
A repeat performance.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
If they actually wanted to attack it, why throw out such an easily dismissed red herring? Point out that Obamacare mandates purchase of "health plans" from a monopoly with no little or no constraints on consumer costs and no mechanisms to ensure that carriers actually pay for treatment?
Nearly all supposed criticisms in the corporate media have been of the BS variety. "It will kill grandma." or "It's socialism/government run." Criticisms which are designed to distract and fail. The Kochs could point out that politicians that were paid millions upon millions actually let the insurance industry write their own law.
If they actually wanted to attack the plan there are plenty of angles of attack. But the Kochs love crony capitalism and corporate welfare, and Obamacare is the great white whale of both.
They would never legitimately attack such a giveaway. All they have to do is make a false, easily defeated argument and they can count a bunch of self-described liberals lining up to defend the insurance industry's desired outcome!
Their biggest problem appears to be how to avoid choking on their champagne and caviar while laughing so hard.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
The curse is that we expect others to be as ethical as we are, and when caught in a crime, or, even a mere hypocrisy, to be ashamed and to slink back into the darkness.
That is the difference between us and them: Ethical people are ethical, and if caught violating those ethics and putting themselves into such a compromising position, would feel said shame.
These Kochs do not suffer from such a malady. They are "smart" enough to realize that it is simply not illegal to be so shameless as to file for contracts under a program that they previously lobbied against. They wouldn't even feel it, even if everyone else knew and cared about their duplicity. They value one criterion, and one criterion only: Does It Pay? "Right and Wrong?" Heh. That's for the little people.
Sadly, it is only we few and other like us who recognize these tremendous Kochs moral bankruptcy. Sadly, that is not a type of bankruptcy that registers on such thieves' radar, nor on the radar of the corporate-owned media, nor the civic power structure.
There oughta be a law.
Boycott and bad mouth all Koch products and industries.Start with Brawny paper towels and Georgia Pacific. There are many, many more. We make them wealthier every time we buy something they sell, so don't enrich them. We may never starve them, but we can kick them a bit.
One member of the DLC's executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively--meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.
The DLC board of trustees is an elite body whose membership is reserved for major donors, and many of the trustees are financial wheeler-dealers who run investment companies and capital management firms--though senior executives from a handful of corporations, such as Koch, Aetna, and Coca-Cola, are included
The moral is to remember to Vote Dem this November or the evil Koch Industries (Teabaggers) might ruin the country.
Can the Professional Left get anymore clueless?
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=h...
Sounds like these guys could easily handle 90% marginal tax rates.
We could really put that money to good use.
Maybe it will also give these lowlife greed-head psychopath's something to think about.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
their jobs and expose this kind of blatant hypocrisy. Do you know how many Republicans have been out their simultaneously trashing the Stimulus while making big public productions of accepting Stimulus money to help their communities. It's pathetic. Rachel Maddow is one of the few (and perhaps Keith Olberman), calling attention to it.
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