So far, no one seems to be benefiting from the roll-out of Obamacare—no one except its architects.
According to The Hill, since 2010 over 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who took part in designing Obamacare have abandoned their federal duties and taken up (very) profitable lobbyist positions on K Street.
Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients.
Veterans of the healthcare push are now lobbying for corporate giants such as Delta Air Lines, UPS, BP America and Coca-Cola, and for healthcare companies including GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
Why are these massive corporations in the market for healthcare advice? It appears that the complexities and ever-changing nature of The Affordable Care Act have made ‘Obamacare insiders’ a hot commodity, regardless of the fact that they designed such a rocky bill:
Ultimately, the clients are after one thing: expert help in dealing with the most sweeping overhaul of the country’s healthcare system in decades.
Demand for ObamaCare insiders is even higher now that major pieces of the law, including the healthcare exchanges and individual insurance mandate, are being set up through a slew of complicated federal regulations.
So as small businesses scrape together funds to stay afloat in a growing sea of new regulations and workers are forced to adjust to the realities of a ‘part-time America’, the officials responsible for the damaging bill are getting paid generously to help ‘handle’ the consequences they created?
That’s priceless.
As noted by Craig Holman, lobbyist for Public Citizen, this revelation “raises questions about the [bill's] integrity.” Critics of the bill once believed that its problems were the consequence of a rushed and ill-thought-out policy design; now, there is good reason to question whether the bill was intentionally designed with flaws to provide steady work for its architects and supporters, like the healthcare lobbyists and public unions.
The good news for the architects-turned-lobbyists is that Obamcare regulations are scheduled to be implemented up until 2020; that’s seven more years of generous compensation from large organizations who are terrified of the gigantic bill. The bad news: it may not take American taxpayers seven years to figure out that they are paying for someone else’s mistakes.