Obama Health Care Law Funds $1B Push for ‘Innovation,’ Jobs
EmailThe Obama administration today rolled out a new billion-dollar initiative that will reward the “most compelling new ideas” for lowering costs and improving care of Medicare and Medicaid patients with lucrative federal grants.
The Health Care Innovation Challenge, to be run by the Department of Health and Human Services, will provide between $1 million and $30 million over three years to individual organizations or coalitions that develop sustainable, new approaches to boosting health care quality and efficiency.
Funding for the program was included as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, parts of which are now slated for a review by the Supreme Court.
Officials cast the announcement as part of President Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign to help the economy, independent of congressional action, since special consideration will be given to proposals that “rapidly hire, train and deploy health care workers.”
“We’ve taken incredible steps to reduce health care costs and improve care, but we can’t wait to do more,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a statement. “Both public and private community organizations around the country are finding innovative solutions to improve our health care system, and the Health Care Innovation Challenge will help jump-start these efforts.”
Sebelius said only projects that can begin within six months will be eligible to receive funds. A final list of sponsored projects will be announced in March.
While the agency says it will closely monitor grantees’ progress on improving care and measure overall savings yielded to taxpayers, Republican critics of the program called it a “$1 billion experiment.”
“On the day the Supreme Court decided to review the constitutionality of ‘Obamacare,’ the president is asking for another $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to pay for another health care experiment that will continue taking us in the wrong direction,” said RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski in a statement. “We already spent $2.6 trillion on his job-killing health care bill. Another $1 billion Executive Order is just more words for a president more interested in campaign talking points than creating jobs.”
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“The Health Care Innovation Challenge, to be run by the Department of Health and Human Services, will provide between $1 million and $30 million over three years to individual organizations or coalitions that develop sustainable, new approaches to boosting health care quality and efficiency.”
It won’t hurt if you’re also major Obama contributor.
Posted by: newcountryman | November 14, 2011, 2:54 pm 2:54 pm
Ah, so the actual trillion dollar bill for health care wasn’t enough for the Marxists. Who didn’t see that coming? The whole thing is a steaming pile of legislation that, like a stool sample from Pelosi, had to be passed before we could see what’s in it and it seems, it needs even more money. That’s never going to change. It was set up to always require more and more and more while delivering less and less, and less, buy enlarging government like a metastasized tumor of corruption for partisan purposes.
Posted by: TexBork | November 14, 2011, 3:04 pm 3:04 pm
Does this include the recent $443 million no bid contract award to Siga Technologies Inc., for a small pox vaccine, whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor?
Posted by: newcountryman | November 14, 2011, 3:32 pm 3:32 pm
This seems like a good idea, to reward proposals that will save us all money for years to come.
Of course the right wing conservative here don’t believe in finding more efficient ways of doing things!
This is no different from smart companies who give financial incentives for innovative ways to save money within the company. It pays off big in the long run. Maybe that’s what the right wingers don’t get, looking at things from the short and long perspective.
I’m glad that President Obama has the mindset that recognizes the importance of long-term planning.
Posted by: Librarian53 | November 14, 2011, 3:44 pm 3:44 pm
Librarian53; It’s just that after all the recent questionable “investments”, it’s right to question if it isn’t simply more political payback. You can bet your bottom dollar some of it will be.
Posted by: newcountryman | November 14, 2011, 3:51 pm 3:51 pm
Do i read this right? The billion is our tax money to help the health industry who already charges what ever they want to us and make record profits. There are clinics, hospital expanding and new ones being built it seems everywhere. So why do the tax payers have to fund this??
Posted by: Jim Rod | November 14, 2011, 3:55 pm 3:55 pm
POSTED BY: LIBRARIAN53 | NOVEMBER 14, 2011, 3:44 PM 3:44 PM. Will that include savings like David Axelrod and Michelle Obama instituted at the Chicago hospital?????? Send the people on Medicare and Medicaid or no Insurance to other Hospitals.
Posted by: Lizzie | November 14, 2011, 3:58 pm 3:58 pm
POSTED BY: LIBRARIAN53 | NOVEMBER 14, 2011, 3:44 PM 3:44 PM. Will that include savings like David Axelrod and Michelle Obama instituted at the Chicago hospital?????? Send the people on Medicare and Medicaid or no Insurance to other Hospitals.
Posted by: Lizzie | November 14, 2011, 3:58 pm 3:58 pm
I hope so!
Posted by: Brad | November 14, 2011, 4:36 pm 4:36 pm
Of course the right wing conservative here don’t believe in finding more efficient ways of doing things!
Of course we do. We applaud the President for funding cures for disease that has already been cured. We appluad the President for simply killing suspected terrorist instead of going to all that trouble in boarding them, feeding them special diets and we don’t even have to worry about whether they have been tottured or not. We applaud him for printing on both sides of paper..who knows we may reap enough out of that to recover some of the money from fake solar companies that I am quite sure George Bush tricked him into funding.
Posted by: david | November 14, 2011, 4:48 pm 4:48 pm
Posted by: david | November 14, 2011, 4:48 pm 4:48 pm
That kind of light-weight analysis doesn’t serve anybody, and certainly not the country.
Posted by: Rene | November 14, 2011, 4:52 pm 4:52 pm
Does this include the recent $443 million no bid contract award to Siga Technologies Inc., for a small pox vaccine, whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor?
Posted by: newcountryman | November 14, 2011, 3:32 pm 3:32 pm
Maybe not Siga, newcountryman, but I’m sure another company like them, with ties to Obama will benefit in the end.
By the way, I haven’t seen a story ANYWHERE on ABC website about Siga, so I sent just the generic information to Brian Ross of the “Investigative” staff here and asked if someone could check further into this and do a story. Whether or not that happens is a ‘different story’. Honestly, there are many more stories like this one that are completely overlooked or under-reported and it’s really a shame that the MSM, supposedly here to keep us informed, cannot do their job.
Posted by: Shoe | November 14, 2011, 5:12 pm 5:12 pm
Posted by: Shoe | November 14, 2011, 5:12 pm 5:12 pm
The Bush administration suspected Saddam Hussein of possessing smallpox and other biological weapons, but inspectors did not find any after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
Still, pressure to move quickly and spend more has helped shape U.S. biodefense policy since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the anthrax mailings that fall.
Investors such as Perelman saw opportunity. In 2003, Perelman, through his holding company MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., invested heavily in Siga and installed a team of executives to run it.
The move seemed prescient when Bush, in June 2004, signed Project BioShield, a 10-year, $5.6-billion initiative to fund the development and stockpiling of medications to counter bioterrorism.
Two months later, Siga purchased the rights to what became known as ST-246 and other assets from a Pennsylvania company, ViroPharma Inc., for $1 million in cash and 1 million shares of Siga’s common stock. Over the next three years, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded Siga two research grants and a related contract, worth a total of $23.5 million, to develop the new drug.
Source: LA Times
This ball was set rolling long before the current administration.
Posted by: David | November 14, 2011, 5:21 pm 5:21 pm
Posted by: Shoe | November 14, 2011, 5:12 pm 5:12 pm
Surely you understand that large corporations have ‘ties’ to both major parties and usually invest in both with the bulk of their contributions going towards whichever party they think is going to win at a particular time.
Check out the history of Siga and the smallpox during the Bush era.
Posted by: David | November 14, 2011, 5:27 pm 5:27 pm
Obama continues to be wrong about everything. This is a re-election bid like everything else he has presented in the last year. The man has no integrity.
Posted by: Ineluctable | November 14, 2011, 5:30 pm 5:30 pm
Just more spending waste that will accomplish absolutely nothing.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | November 14, 2011, 5:38 pm 5:38 pm
The man has no integrity.
Posted by: Ineluctable | November 14, 2011, 5:30 pm 5:30 pm
Far more integrity than most of the politicians at that level.
Reagan’s administration ran an illegal shadow government, Nixon WAS a crook, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton (a war and oil company), walked over to the Vice Presidency and began making decisions about funding war and oil. Etc, etc.
Posted by: David | November 14, 2011, 5:39 pm 5:39 pm
@David: I’m not sure how much of a “ball” that is. Those are some fairly clear patterns, and it’s not surprising that a successful entrepreneur would be able to see something along the lines of [we're afraid "they" have bio-weapons->the security focused administration is likely to fund vaccines->bio-research is about to become an even more profitable place]. That they purchased the rights to a promising new drug and secured a pair of grants to bring it to market just speaks to their competence, not any hidden deals or corruption.
Posted by: E.R. | November 14, 2011, 5:42 pm 5:42 pm
correct me if i am wrong but obamas wife made 300,000 a year as a director of a chicago hospital. her wages incraesed 3 fold when her husband became a senator. with all of her experience as a board member and undoubtedly involved in day to day operations you would think she would have all the answers unless her job was in name only or because her husband was a senator or both.
with a trillion being spent to do just that why would we need to spend another billion?
Posted by: catman | November 14, 2011, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
with a trillion being spent to do just that why would we need to spend another billion?
Posted by: catman | November 14, 2011, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
When seeking answers, it’s good to be able to read . .. like for instance, read the article you’re commenting on . .. “Funding for the program was included as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act”
Posted by: David | November 14, 2011, 8:04 pm 8:04 pm
david wrote:”When seeking answers, it’s good to be able to read . .. like for instance, read the article you’re commenting on . .. “Funding for the program was included as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act””
.
Just because it was “included” doesn’t mean it was a good idea and HAS to be spent. A novel idea that a DEMOCRAT has never heard of is to eliminate some “funding” and return that money back to where it came from…. THE TAXPAYER! DEMOCRATS instead think that it just absolutely, positively, has to be spent regardless of whether it makes good sense or not.
Posted by: Michelle Shu Jas | November 14, 2011, 9:09 pm 9:09 pm