♡bamaCare!!! Profiteer
National Review’s Joel Gehrke has something of an expose on the Jeb Bush/♡bamaCare!!! connection:
In the more than seven years Bush served on Tenet’s board, the company executed a remarkable turnaround, emerging from the scandal into a period of expansion that returned it to the top of the health-care industry. Bush himself benefited handsomely from the growth. Last year alone, he earned $170,000 in stock awards and $188,000 in fees. He earned over $2 million during the seven years he served on the Tenet board and sold $1.1 million worth of stock in 2013, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Support for Obamacare has driven Tenet’s renewed success. “Early on we push hard to be contracted with as many exchange plans as possible,” CEO Trevor Fetter said on an earnings call last summer, referring to the health-care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. Tenet also promoted the law’s enrollment drive. “We are confident at least 16,000 people enrolled in exchange-based products and tens of thousands more enrolled in Medicaid as a result of our efforts,” Fetter said.
HillaryCare failed in no small part because it threatened to put the insurance companies out of business — and they acted quickly to defend themselves. The genius of ♡bamaCare!!! is that it brought the insurance companies on board, by giving them a captive market mandated to buy catastrophic plans at Cadillac prices.
But ♡bamaCare!!!’s other genius is how far and wide it spreads its corruption. Jeb Bush — a possible GOP nominee — has been ensnared in it, willingly, from the start. And it’s inconceivable (yes, I keep using that word) that Bush wasn’t imagining himself as a presidential contender at the very same time he was making million-dollar deals off of law despised by the GOP electorate and unloved even by the broader population. How does Bush effectively run against a law he’s profited so handsomely from? Simple: He doesn’t.
As I wrote last week, “There’s absolutely no good reason — short- or longterm, win or lose — for the GOP to nominate Jeb Bush. If nominated, he would likely be a disaster. If elected, he would likely be worse, cementing in the rot at the national party level.”
Truer words…
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