WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 -- Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee issued the following news release:
Bernie Madoff may be out of work, but if he gets sick, he won't be out of luck. The billionaire perpetrator of the largest financial scam in history will be sitting pretty thanks to his helpful government covering 65 percent of his health insurance tab. And he doesn't even need to go to jail first.
That's because the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Democratic majority can't figure out how to make him - or any other millionaire - ineligible for government-paid health insurance. Poor things, they could abruptly lose their livelihoods, like Mr. Madoff, and only need a little boost from the taxpayers to get back on their feet. It's a hand up, see, not a handout.
Things almost didn't work out for Mr. Madoff. For awhile, it looked like the $825 billion stimulus bill was about to leave gazillionaires on the hook to buy their own insurance. The author of an amendment to accomplish that, Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, explained it this way: 'People who make more than $1 million, it would prevent them - in fact, if they made a $100 million - it would prevent them from receiving a COBRA premium assistance subsidy.'
What the heck is a COBRA? The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act in 1986, naturally. It's supposed to continue group health coverage that is lost when a job is lost. COBRA provides the temporary right to group rates with taxpayers picking up a share that former employers used to pay.
COBRA wasn't supposed to bail out the wealthy along with the poor, but Stearns pointed out that the latest stimulus bill obligated taxpayers to pay 65 percent of the COBRA premiums for the rich who faced selling off a yacht or an airplane in order to make ends meet. 'It's just not right to have your party help these people who are making so much money, and to step in and say, 'OK Mr. Taxpayer from Ocala, Fla., from Okahumpka, Fla., from Micanopy, Fla., from Oklawaha, Fla, and from Osceola, Fla., you guys are going to have to pay the Madoffs of this world with this COBRA payment. I mean, my constituents, like yours, are having a very tough time. You're asking me to tax them and say, 'OK, you need to pay for these rich guys on Wall Street?' It's not right.'
Democratic committee staffers looked at each other and evidently concluded that taxing working people to pay for Bernie Madoff's health insurance might look just awful, even though they had already announced that it was impossible to differentiate rich from poor when handing out government benefits. Suddenly the tone changed.
'I would think it wouldn't be as difficult to check if somebody's annual income is $1 million or more,' observed the Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. He didn't know how the system would work, 'but I'll agree to the amendment and we'll try to find a way to structure it. I'm willing to accept the amendment on the condition that we'll see if it can work, and if it can't work we're not going to stay with it, but we'll give it a try.'
Over the weekend they decided that it couldn't work, after all. So when the bill was sent to the House floor, the Stearns amendment was missing. Accepted without a vote, it was dumped without a vote, but out of sight of cameras and reporters.
Afterward, mischievous Republican staffers compiled a list of some who could get in line with Mr. Madoff for subsidized health coverage. It included Angelo Mozilo, the former chairman and CEO of Countrywide Financial who was named by CNN as one of the 'Ten Most Wanted Culprits' of the financial crisis; former Merrill Lynch Chairman and CEO John Thain, who famously spent $1.22 million redecorating his office suite, including $87,000 for a Persian rug, a $35,000 toilet, and a $1,400 garbage can; Daniel Mudd, the ex-Fannie Mae president and CEO whose name was mud after the government was forced to seize control of his crippled corporation last year; Richard Fuld, the Lehman Brothers CEO who led his company into bankruptcy and collected the Financial Times' 'Overpaid CEO' for raking in $75 million in the two years before Lehman's collapse; and Kerry Killinger, the ex-chairman and CEO of Washington Mutual who collected $88 million in compensation for the accomplishment of exposing his company in the subprime market.
The COBRA subsidy for deposed corporate chieftains gave Democrats some pause, but there was never much question that millionaires who are ill and unemployed would be eligible for the welfare program, Medicaid. Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats said they couldn't sort out the spats-and-top-hat crowd from the unemployed poor, but doubted many millionaires would apply, anyway. The no-Medicaid-for-millionaires proposal was rejected on a vote of 27-13.
Voting with the millionaires were Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry A. Waxman, CA, chairman of the committee; John Dingell, Mich.; Frank Pallone, Jr., N.J.; Bart Gordon, Tenn.; Anna Eshoo, Calif.; Bart Stupak, Mich.; Eliot Engel, N.Y.; Gene Green, Tex.; Diana DeGette, Colo.; Lois Capps, Calif.; Janice Schakowsky, Ill.; Charles Gonzalez, Tex.; Jay Inslee, Wash.; Tammy Baldwin, Wisc.; Mike Ross, Ark.; Anthony Weiner, N.Y.; G.K. Butterfield, N.C.; Charlie Melancon, La.; Baron Hill, Ind.; Doris Matsui, Calif.; Donna Christensen, V.I.; Kathy Castor, Fla.; John Sarbanes, Md.; Christopher Murphy, Conn.; Zachary Space, Ohio; Jerry McNerney, Calif.; Betty Sutton, Ohio; Bruce Braley, Iowa.
Voting to keep millionaires off Medicaid were Republican U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, Tex., ranking member; Ralph Hall, Tex.; Nathan Deal, Ga.; John Shadegg, Ariz.; Roy Blunt, Mo.; Steve Buyer, Ind.; Joseph Pitts, Penn.; Greg Walden, Ore.; Mike Rogers, Mich.; Tim Murphy, Penn.; Michael Burgess, Tex; Phil Gingrey, Ga.For more information about US Fed News contract awards please contact: Sarabjit Jagirdar, US Fed News, Email:- htsyndication@hindustantimes.com.
