Saturday, October 19, 2013

Obamacare Agency Spends $56 Million on Conferences in FY 2012

Obamacare has proven to be a abject failure: The half-billion dollar web site bombed; only 36,000 Americans have signed up for insurance through the exchanges when HHS predicted half a million (that's .00012% of Americans); there are calls for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's head in a platter from all over. Now we find out that the bureaucracy responsible for implementing the most far-reaching, invasive and onerous government entitlement -- one which Barack the Terrible promised would reduce costs for everyone -- spent $56 million on conferences in FY 2012:

 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent over $56 million on 135 conferences in one year, ranging from Head Start meetings to diversity seminars.
According to the agency’s report on conferences for fiscal year 2012, HHS spent an average of $415,784 per event.
Four conferences were devoted to the Head Start program, including the “1st National Birth to Five Leadership Institute,” a three-day conference held at the Washington Hilton for $836,521. The conference taught participants how to become Head Start leaders.
A “Head Start Research Conference” held at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C., cost $1,130,000.
HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement hosted a $350,000 conference at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Va., entitled, “Transforming Hope into a Brighter Future.”
“The purpose of this meeting was to consult with various stakeholder groups to support vulnerable populations in becoming self-sufficient in the United States,” a description of the event said.
Two conferences were held on “health care in rural America” in Washington, D.C. within two months, for a total of $319,467.
Another event focused on how to “diversify the nursing workforce,” at a cost of $151,200. The “Nursing 3D: Workforce Diversity, Health Disparities, Social Determinants of Health” event was held at the North Bethesda Marriott in Maryland.
“The purpose of the summit was to convene experts, thought leaders, and key workforce diversity stakeholders to identify the full range of academic and health system factors, as well as the social, economic, and environmental determinants that influence our ability to diversify the nursing workforce,” HHS said.
 Can you say WTF????

The point here is this: Everything us reasonable people have said about the bloat, excess and bureaucratic disaster of a command and control government health care system is coming true. How can a bureaucracy that wastes  $1.1 million on a Head Start conference -- a completely unnecessary and useless program -- efficiently deliver health care options to the claimed "30 million uninsured"? How can bureaucracy that spends $56 million on conferences in one year and blows hundreds of millions of dollars on a web site that doesn't work do anything efficiently? The answers is this: It can't, it won't and it never was intended to.

That Obamacare was never intended to work efficiently is a given. When the reasonable people were pointing on that 85% of Americans already had health care and the majority of them were happy with it, no one was listening. When we pointed out that the truly "poor" and "needy" already had better health care than most of the rest of us through Title 19 and Medicaid programs, nobody cared. When we pointed out that no one in this country can be refused necessary medical care as a matter of law no one listened. Now command and control government health care administered by the bloated, wasteful bureaucracy is in place and will soon be entrenched as is every other facet of the Democrat's command and control welfare state is.


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