ObamaCare’s Grant-Making
Early this year, I was briefly involved with one of the Affordable Care Act’s bureaucracies called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, or CMMI. Despite its lofty ideals, it is one more pork program and venue for political cronyism, as I learned firsthand…George Washington University earned $1,939,127 because it expected to reduce health costs by a mere $1.7 million. Similarly, the Center for Health Care Services in San Antonio received $4,557,969 to save $5 million.
It gets worse. See Steven Greer’s Wall Street Journal editorial.
Taken in total, the government paid $6.6 million to get back $6.7 million. Paying one university $2 million to (theoretically) reduce costs by $1.7 million; and another organization $4.6 million for the chance to reduce costs by $5 million sounds like a very bad investment.
I wish I could get in on that gravy train! If the government would give me, say, $1 million, I could definitely earn my fee and tell bureaucrats how to save far more than $1 million. My answer: in the future, don’t give huge grants for bogus, money-saving schemes!
I’m trying to think of a nifty economic term to describe this.
Shadow spending. Redistributive investing. Faux saving.
The information tacked onto the end of the article was interesting too. Handouts to your friends is what we call corruption…
It’s programs like this that give fuel to the fire of government incompetency. I keep trying and trying to understand the rationalization for programs like this that produce such undesirable outcomes and I have never been able to.
@brian, the 80s called, and they want their lexicon back.
Touche, Ambrose. Brian, if you’re looking for a ‘nifty’ word, you’ve lost before the gates open.