Big Dogs Weblog

These Are The People Who Will Run Health Care

by Big Dog on Jul 2, 2010 at 04:30 Political

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is in charge of the new health care takeover that was recently signed into law. The Democrats say it will save money and “bend the cost curve” but new figures from the CBO (figures arrived at using all the specifics) show this is not the case. Don’t worry though, the crack, fiscally responsible bureaucrats will watch our money like hawks.

Or will they?

The same DHHS that will oversee the health care takeover wasted millions of dollars in a program designed to pay for heating and air conditioning for the poor. There was no oversight and the “hawks” ended up paying for the needs of dead people, people in prison and folks living in million dollar homes. One person who received the assistance lives in a 2 million dollar home in a ritzy part of Chicago. Oh, and she drives a Mercedes.

A federal program designed to help impoverished families heat and cool their homes wasted more than $100 million paying the electric bills of thousands of applicants who were dead, in prison or living in million-dollar mansions, according to a government investigation.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spent $5 billion through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program in 2009, doling out money to states with little oversight of the program. Some states don’t verify applicants’ identifies or income. For example, the program helped pay the electric bill of a woman who lives in a $2 million home in a wealthy Chicago suburb and drives a Mercedes, according to the yet-to-be released report obtained by The Associated Press. AP via Yahoo News

Compared to the health care system in this country this energy assistance program is relatively small and yet the people who are supposed to be responsible with our money allowed millions of dollars in waste.

How on Earth will they manage a health care system estimated to cost in the trillions of dollars?

Medicare is already fraught with waste and abuse and, it too, is small compared to the entire health care system.

If the government is not capable of managing our money responsibly in these smaller programs what makes anyone think it will be responsible with the huge sums of money their takeover of health care will cost?

This is what happens when government gets involved in things, especially when it grows too big.

On the heels of the disclosure that California welfare ATM cards are being used at casinos, a new report indicates they are also being used at strip clubs. And don’t get me started on the waste involved during Katrina (which continues to this day).

The California waste is at the state level and the energy assistance program is at the federal level and the similarities are striking. In neither case did the government have proper oversight of our money. This happens when an entity has control of money it does not have to earn. If the money came out of their pockets they would actually be watching it.

It is just a matter of time before the health care takeover gives us stories like this on a regular basis.

But don’t worry. Government will tell us it needs more money and more oversight (which it sorely lacks all the time) and then push for greater control and more revenue to fix a problem that it created.

Government spends a lot of time working to fix problems that it creates.

Never surrender, never submit.

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Tags: dhhs, energy assistance, fraud, health care, wasyed money