Kentucky Congressman Exploits Legislation to Loot Taxpayers
Politicians and corruption go together like peanut butter and jelly. For years, many of the crooked were able to fly under the radar because of growing apathy to politics in mainstream America. But the collapse of the housing market slapped citizens awake, helping shine a giant spotlight on our miscreant representatives.
Yet there’s one congressman who has escaped public scrutiny: Kentucky Democrat John Yarmuth.
Yarmuth was one of the 28 lawmakers who helped draft the health care bill while having financial holdings in the industry. Yarmuth holds up to $5 million in stock in a home health care company run by his brother, William Yarmuth. The company is called Almost Family. In a mutually beneficial relationship, Almost Family receives over 80% of its revenue through Medicare while most of the legislation impassioning Yarmuth involves expanding Medicare.
In 2006, when Yarmuth was first elected to the House, Almost Family began rapidly buying up Medicare-certified agencies, acquiring 21 Florida agencies just in that year. Though based in Louisville, Almost Family has successfully expanded operations to several states over the last few years, becoming one of the nation’s largest home health care companies. And while the company expanded, Yarmuth worked on legislation to increase Medicare spending.
According to Business First, Almost Family’s first quarter profits this year rose 19% due in part to “an increase in Medicare reimbursements.” Its first quarter revenues grew to $81.1 million from last year’s $68.9 million.
Although Kentuckians didn’t like the monstrous health care takeover, Yarmuth played a key role in its passage. He helped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi negotiate votes from House members who weren’t in favor of the bill, and Pelosi asked Yarmuth to lead a health reform message group. Yarmuth’s job was to help members in “communicating the Democrats’ health-care message.”
Nearly two-thirds of Kentuckians thought the bill should never become law. But Yarmuth ignored his constituents, obeyed Pelosi, and kept his focus on his fattening wallet.
Immediately after the House passed the health care bill he helped draft, Yarmuth wrote, “Much of the savings from insurance reform will be invested into Medicare.”
According to Almost Family CEO William Yarmuth, he has his brother to thank for the increasing profits and better ability to plan more company expansion. “The recent passage of health care reform legislation now provides us with reasonable reimbursement visibility for the next three years,” said CEO Yarmuth.
But Almost Family’s growth will go far beyond three years. According to Congressman Yarmuth, “Much of the savings from insurance reform will be invested into Medicare with a six percent increase expected for the program annually over the next decade.” Almost Family’s stocks will likely surge with each passing year.
Still, John Yarmuth is working to raise his profits even more. Of all the bills he has sponsored or co-sponsored during the current congressional term, over half have been health care related.
He is one of the co-sponsors of H.R. 676, the Medicare for All Act. Better invest in Almost Family now, because once this passes and Medicare is available to everyone, stocks will skyrocket.
I guess you just justified why I support the end of the fee for service practice. Private agencies and practices are largely responsible for the rape of the health care system.
Actually, if you pay attention, this isn’t strict private practice at all. This is government interference in the industry. A family member in congress drafting bills to bennefit a family run business back home is not free competition or private enterprise. It is at best something that should get the congressman kicked out of office for ethics violations, at worst it’s a sign of how easily we’re switching to corpratist practices. I realize that this happens a lot more than we’d like to know, but this isn’t small district-sized pork, this is messing with the national budget and the entire medical care industry.
As for the ‘rape’ of the health care system…I’d ask what you mean, but I don’t actually care since that’s the word you started with. I know that if I were in a state that didn’t have a health care bill of rights, I could actually buy affordable catastrophic care insurance. If there were interstate competition, I could go online and find the Progressive or GEICO of health insurance and they’d be competing for my business, not assured of it. If there weren’t the new health care law, I could concievable set up an HSA that I could use to save money against eventual need, possibly combining it with a high deductable, low-cost insurance. If the account was allowed to build with time, it could also help defray costs against age-related issues, and things like in-home care, reducing the taxable burden.
I’m all for regulators making sure insurance companies live up to their policies, and bringing the hammer down when the defraud or resist a claim, and cleaning up the (congressionally created) legal language that lets them find loopholes, but a lot of those holes, and a lot of the higher costs associated with it, are driven by government interest in ‘helping the people’, which in this case, seems to mean ‘helping them pay more for insurance’.
Oh, and I’ve experienced the great and wonderful health care system that is in Canada, and my experience was, well, I don’t have anything polite I can say. Same for the care a British friend of mine had in Britain’s care system. You really don’t want government beuracracy mixed up in your medical care.
Thank you for slappin’ some sense into this fool.
Yeee hah, a red neck hick weighs in. Are you into slapping poeple?
I work for an insurance company whose headquarters is outside of my state. There are many insurance companies doing business in my state that are not headquartered there. Those insurance companies have to comply with the insurance laws of each state and establish contracts with health care providers in each area.
And don’t be fooled, insurance companies are not in your corner. They only answer to their share holders.
As for raping the system, I see plenty of it from the provider side.
3rd District Libertarian candidate Ed Martin has been speaking about this for years. He uncovered this in 2007 and no one wanted to hear it. Now they want to make it an issue because they think a Republican candidate can use it. Where has this outrage been?
Yes, the biggest story in the history of the US is in the known facts of the gulf oil spill, yet no one can see it and even if they did, the maim stream media only prints what they hear from “Johnny/Susie”.
The Journalist today is generally not skilled in the art of the subject matter he/she covers and does not understand who, what, when, where, why; therefore he is blind to the biggest story in the last 200 years and maybe the biggest story ever.
Cellulose ethanol is a good example of journalistic ineptitude; journalist simply accept the canards/invalid objections, are not “skilled in the art” of the subject matter, are unable to ask relevant questions or understand relevant answers, because they are not skilled in the subject and they only believe and find relevant what “Johnny/Susie” say.
At 85 I am costing Medicare quite a bundle, probably more than I have made all my life since I do have some rather expensive medical problems. On the other hand, I have been able to write comments such as this one that can get us away from the crumbling edge of the cliff leading to that bottomless pit. In other words, what we are doing is unsustainable and also unjustifiable. This report helps confirm my firm opinion that it was not my welfare that pushed the health reform bill into law but this same brand of corruption that you report. The bait and switch syndrome so dear to these legislator’s hearts.
If I plant two fields of corn and one get the rain and the other don’t, the dry field will yield much less than its potential. This type of legislation cuts off the rain and dries up our yields. As in the days of Joseph there were seven fat years followed by seven lean years. When the famine began there were adequate stores but as the years passed the population parted with all their wealth just to stay alive and the government wound up owning everything. Medicare is not producing any revenue of its own but is taking revenue from the businesses and their employees in the form of taxes, which leaves them with less and less maneuvering room to do the things they need to do. I fully realize that I have needed this medical attention to stay alive and I am also aware that that I could not afford to have this medical attention out of my own pocket. That leaves two options, private charity or public welfare. Private charity is a voluntary program and must receive voluntary funding. If you are struggling you are not required to give to charity. Government welfare is tax supported and those taxes are mandatory. For a business and its employees to pay those taxes it must raise its selling price to cover the overhead, imposing that tax on every customer. The only option is raise your price and stay in business or not make a profit and go out of business. The idea we can soak the rich without paying the price is unfounded. We see more and more how this system is consuming our productive power with increasing gaps on the shelf and fewer and fewer productive incomes to support the tax load. Raising taxes accelerates the downfall and can, in no way,increase our productivity which is the only source of revenue.
The liberal believes that profit is the same as robbery, not knowing that their very lives are fully dependent on increase, which translates into profit. If we had stayed with the free enterprise system I may not have lived this long or I may have been able to have found the doctor who could have kept me from getting in this medical condition. I don’t know. I do know that the time is not far in the future when this system we now have is going to collapse and it will be like the Haitian earthquake that caused all those building to collapse on the people inside. We won’t escape without a struggle and some sacrfices but we are given a path which will lead us back to sound economics if we have the vision to follow it. ** Ps 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
So when are we going to charge,try, and convict some of these B*atards? frankly, Im tired of reading about the things crroks like RangHo ,Monohan,FindSwine, Mad Maxine Watters and all too many other dimorats do without ever facing the music. Some of these aholes,like Rangho and Piglosi, come from districts where there lazy constiuents will never vote them out, even after there death.
Please state your opinions without ugly adjectives, because the poster of ugly adjectives invariably only describe themselves and after seeing…no one will ever even glance at anything you post. I think most people here look for varied opinions, & some politeness.
Civility is nice, but it’s time for outrage.
Really??? A Democrat Congressman caught with his fingers in the cookie jar again??? I’m shocked, just shocked I tell you. (sarc on)
Actually this sounds like just more of the same old same old.
First, thanks Ms. Durand for shining some light on Congressman Yarmuth’s conflicts of interest. PJ media should work at getting more local boots-on-the-ground reporting like this. We’ve got Professor Hansen reporting the woes of California, but that leaves 49 other states.
It’s OK to opine about national issues, but, ultimately, it’s Congress (and state legislatures) who make the laws and spend the money, and they are just the sum of people like Mr. Yarmuth, elected district by district.
Good job, ma’am.
Second, it would have been useful to point out that Mr. Yarmouth faces a fresh Republican opponent this fall. This district is basically Louisville, and it’s strongly Democrat, so it’s an uphill fight. But if anyone wants to throw some sand in the gears of Mr. Yarmouth’s campaign, they could always send a few bucks to his opponent.
Republican Todd Lally looks pretty good to me. In his day job, he’s first officer of a 757/767 freighter flying internationally for UPS. On week-ends, he’s a Lieutenant Colonel in the Kentucky Air National Guard, flying C-130s. He’s a 22-year veteran of the Air Guard.
Col. Lally is the recipient of two Air Medals. The first was for flying 50 missions into war-torn Bosnia supplying the civilian population with food and medicine. The second medal was for saving a Seattle man’s life in the Atlantic Ocean. He also is a crash investigator for the U.S. Air Force.
It strikes me that being a crash-investigator would be a perfect skill-set for someone going to Congress.
http://lallyforcongress.com/meet-todd/
Mr. Lally is a hero. On the other hand, Mr. Yarmuth went to Yale. Tough choice, huh?
Third, with respect Ms. Durand, it wouldn’t hurt to freshen up your stock of metaphors before hitting the keyboard. “Going over like a lead balloon” goes over like, well…
– Freebootrr
Well, this is the same old story. It happens most of the times.
Was this ever covered in the courier urinal newspaper? I don’t subscribe to it and was wondering if they mentioned it.
No. It has not and probably will not be covered by the CJ. It was covered on WHAS radio today in an interview with Yarmuth. The CJ did publish an article in 2006 where Yarmuth said he believes Anne Northup’s (his opponent) holdings present conflicts “when she is casting votes that directly affect companies she has substantial interests in.” He doesn’t see a problem with it now though according to what he said on the radio.
I’m REALLY disappointed to read this about Yarmuth. The man has so much money he could buy the whole city. WHY would he let himself get into a mess like this?? It just makes no sense. I loved what he wrote in 2006 about cleaning up the corruption in Washington and now HE’S the BIG CROOK! This makes Maxine Waters look like a saint. Why isn’t the Courier-Journal printing this article? Everyone should know what’s going on with our local politicians. We know every stupid little detail about Rand Paul — probably even his type of toothpaste. And this goes on for YEARS without so much as a mention???