Thieves to the left of me, thieves to the right: RINOs cashing in on Obamacare grants

Big time.  The lust for money and power is bipartisan and insatiable.  The only solution is to strip the Federal Government of much of its domestic power and return to a system where the 50 states compete for business and residents.  There needs to be a competitive market for good governance.

So Obamacare is turning into a cash cow for more than just the drug industry that helped write it.

The cash cow gaining attention today is the costly proces -- which is very well funded by taxpayers -- of setting up the state-level exchanges Obamacare mandates. Politico has the big piece on this today. Here's the heart of the piece:

The health reform law and the millions of dollars it invests in health exchanges, the new marketplaces that states must launch by 2014 or risk the federal government coming in and taking over the task.

More than $300 million in exchange grants has already flowed into the states since the Affordable Care Act passed. That number will grow exponentially in the coming months, as states move from the initial steps of passing exchange legislation to the more lucrative task of setting them up.

For health consultants and information technology vendors, it’s already shaping up to be a gold mine.

Michael Cannon at Cato picks out one of the characters in this exchange racket: George W. Bush's HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, whose consulting firm is running around to gobble up this taxpayer lucre. Meanwhile, another Bush HHS Secretary and health-care consultant, Tommy Thompson joins the club of revolving-door K Streeters getting space at HuffPo for their industry talk.

What I find most interesting is the Left's reaction to this Obamacare profiteering. You see, I've been nearly alone in pointing out that Pro-Obamacare Republicans stand to profit from the law. The rest of the MSM and the Left have ignored this inconvenient truth, which crashes against their narrative that the legislative fight was "reformers" vs. industry shills.

Here's what Igor Volsky of the Center for American Progress wrote in 2009:

President Bush’s Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt appeared to distance himself from the Republican alternative to universal health reform — consumer driven health care. While it’s unclear if Leavitt was endorsing an Obama-like proposal, Leavitt’s suggestion that the government — and not just the free market — has a role to play in providing affordable coverage seems to rebuke conservative campaign talking points

And here's Volsky praising Thompson for opposing Obamacare repeal.

But here's what Volsky says today about Leavitt and Thompson:

A funny thing is happening between the two Republicans who ran the Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush and did so little to expand access to health insurance: they’re now both supporting President Obama’s health care exchanges — the new market places that will allow Americans to easily compare and purchase health insurance in 2014.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/06/public-servants-profiting-billion-dollar-industry-created-obamaca#ixzz1QgRuwZvv
Break it up, break it all up.