(VIDEO) Massive Disability Fraud Will Cause The Fund To Run Out Of Money In 18 Months

Tom Coburn’s office does 2 year investigation into disability fraud

SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS:
3p.m. -- Holds a hearing on ``Social Security Disability Benefits: Did a Group of Judges, Doctors, and Lawyers Abuse Programs for the Country's Most Vulnerable?'' Sarah Carver, senior case technician at the Social Security Administration (appearing in a personal capacity); Jennifer Griffith, former master docket clerk at the Social Security Administration (appearing in a personal capacity); David Herr, doctor of osteopathic medicine, West Union, Ohio; A. Bradley Adkins, a psychologist in Pikeville, Ky.; Srinivas Ammisetty, doctor of Pulmonology in Stanville, Ky.; Eric Conn, attorney and owner of The Conn Law Firm; David Daugherty, former administrative law judge at the Social Security Administration; and Charlie Andrus, administrative law judge of the Social Security Administration (appearing in a personal capacity), testify.

FEDERAL DISABILITY
The Federal Disability Insurance Program could become the first government benefits program to run out of money. When it began back in the 1950s it was envisioned as a small program to assist people who were unable to work because of illness or injury. Today, it serves nearly 12 million people -- up 20 percent in the last six years -- and has a budget of $135 billion. That's more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined. Some critics call it a "secret welfare system" with it's own "disability industrial complex," a system ravaged by waste and fraud. A 3pm Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing will examine the issue.
Source: Fox News

Disability, USA

October 6, 2013 4:48 PM

Steve Kroft reports on the alarming state of the federal disability program, which has exploded in size in the last six years and could become the first federal benefits program to run out of money.

Disability, USA

Social Security Disability Fraud, Panel 1

Oct 7, 2013

Witnesses testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Social Security benefits fraud. Attorney Eric Conn was accused of hiring doctors to submit false health assessments and colluding with a Kentucky judge who approved the disability claims. Two witnesses who worked at the Kentucky office where the claims were processed said they experienced retaliation when they tried to raise questions about the claims being filed. Eric Conn, the attorney accused of filing the fraudulent claims, refused to testify. The Administrative Judge involved with the alleged scheme also failed to testify despite being called as a witness at the hearing.

To watch the entire hearing: C-Span
 

GROUPS LED BY INSIDER TRADER, CHILD ABUSER GOT OBAMACARE CO-OP LOANS

Groups led by insider trader, child abuser got Obamacare Co-Op loans

Millions of Americans may get their health insurance coverage through co-operatives being established under a $2 billion Obamacare program that has been shielded in secrecy and is now under investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (AP Photo)

Federal officials approved Obamacare loans totaling $127 million last year to groups led by individuals whose backgrounds included an insider trading conviction and another with a long history of child sexual abuse, The Washington Examiner has learned.

The loans -- which must be repaid at a future date -- are to fund health insurance co-operative startups in Louisiana and Maine. They will compete with private sector health insurance providers under a $2 billion Obamacare initiative to fund 24 co-op startups nationwide.

Both the Maine and Louisiana co-ops are among 13 under investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

In the Maine case, federal officials approved a $62 million loan to Maine Community Health Options even though its president had recently committed suicide after state police accused the co-op's president of molesting teenage boys for decades.

Despite extensive media coverage of the scandal, federal officials approved the loan five months before Maine State Police made public a 104-page report detailing the abuse allegations over a 36-year period.

The Louisiana case involves Louisiana Health Cooperative and CEO Terry Shilling. The Securities and Exchange Commission sanctioned Shilling in 1998 for "insider trading" as a health care executive.

The Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight manages the loan awards.

In the Maine case, the Rev. Bob Carlson took his life after state police confronted him with the sexual abuse allegations.

Carlson had been widely respected as a civic and religious leader in Maine for many years. He served as a senior pastor at a church, chaplain at a local university and deputy sheriff. He was president of the Maine Primary Care Association and the Maine Community Health Options co-op.

But that image was shattered by the state police report's description of how Carlson took advantage of his positions to approach young boys from ages 11 to 18.

Officials also discovered after his suicide that Carlson had lied on his resume about his credentials, falsely claiming a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, as well as being a New York Theological Seminary graduate and having taken theological training at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Mass.

Kevin Lewis, CEO of the Maine co-op, told The Washington Examiner that he informed federal officials four days after Carlson's suicide. The Maine loan was approved by CCIIO in April 2012, but the police report on Carlson's long history of abusing teenage boys only became public in August of that year.

Lewis said CCIIO did not consider the scandal to be a problem. "It was not really an issue in terms of the standing of our application," he said.

Spokesmen for CCIIO declined to comment.

In the Louisiana case, Schilling was sanctioned for insider trading while working at Georgia-based HealthSource Inc., where he bought 1,900 shares of that company's stock shortly after receiving a "confidential briefing" about an impending merger with CIGNA, according to the SEC.

Schilling was sanctioned and fined $10,000. Shilling left HealthSource prior to the merger, according to a CIGNA spokesman.

Even so, Schilling's group received a $65 million loan.

Neither Schilling nor CCIIO responded to a reporter's multiple telephone calls and emails seeking comment.

Judy Nadler, a government ethics expert and former mayor of Santa Clara, Calif., said the Obamacare co-op loan program needs much more transparency.

"How can individuals who have some negative experiences and scrapes with the law, how is it they could come to the top of the order when it comes to handing out the money?" she asked.

Tom Miller, a federal health expert at the American Enterprise Institute, doubts CCIIO did due diligence reviews. "What is the screening criteria, if any, or on what basis are these awards based?" he asked.

The Washington Examiner's previous stories on the Obamacare co-ops are here, here, here, here and here.

 Obamacare co-ops being created behind closed doors 

Secrecy shrouds President Obama's $2 billion program to launch 24 new co-ops designed to compete with private insurance companies under the chief executive's landmark health care reform.

An obscure agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded loans of all but $100 million of the funds appropriated under President Obama's health care overhaul for the new organizations, known as Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans.

That worries some in Congress, including Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who told The Washington Examiner that "we want to know, what's their due diligence, what's their process, how are they arriving at these decisions? What are the protections in place for policyholders? Where are the protections for the U.S. taxpayer?"

The Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, or CCIIO, approved applicants for the federal money even though few have any experience in providing health insurance to consumers. Under the law, the loans must be repaid.

CCIIO officials have not made public their criteria for evaluating loan applicants. Those officials declined to be interviewed.

The co-ops were proposed during the health care reform debate in Congress by then-Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., as an acceptable alternative to the single-payer public option preferred by many Senate Democrats.

A 15-member panel set up by Obama's health care reforms to oversee the loans held only three public meetings, then disbanded 21 months ago. HHS paid consulting firm Deloitte $2.4 million to review loan applications, according to USAspending.gov. A Deloitte spokesman declined to comment.

The lack of openness became public last December when CCIIO denied the loan application of Illinois-based SimpleHx. "I really don't know why they choose one over the other," Coe Schlicher, a SimpleHx principal, told The Washington Examiner. "We have not found a way to gain access to the review process notes or the results of their scoring system."

Congress also has been kept in the dark. In an April 2012 letter, four leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee demanded that HHS produce information about the eligibility standards and decision-making process used for evaluating co-op loan applicants.

And in May 2012, Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Michael Ezni, R-Wyo., asked for details about the program from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius has responded to neither request.

Congressional leaders point to a 2013 Office of Management and Budget analysis that projected that as many as 43 percent of the co-ops could default. If that happens, taxpayers will foot the bill, as they did with bankrupt companies like Solyndra under Obama's clean energy subsidies.

Read More: The Washington Examiner

Failed Iowa entrepreneur awarded $112 million for Obamacare co-ops

Federal officials awarded $112 million to fund new Obamacare health insurance cooperatives in Iowa and Nebraska to a group whose politically connected chief financial officer recorded at least three business flops since 2009.

CoOportunity Health, an Ames, Iowa, group founded by CFO Stephen Ringlee, received the federal funds as a tax-free loan from the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The loans are part of an Obamacare initiative that includes $2 billion to fund groups selected behind closed doors by the CCIIO. Loans have been awarded to create co-ops to compete with private health insurers in 24 states so far.

The Washington Examiner recently exposed more than $500 million in CCIIO loans awarded to politically connected individuals to create co-ops in New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois and Ohio.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has projected that as many as 43 percent of the startup co-ops will fail.

Ringlee appears at first glance to be a financial entrepreneur who could help emerging health insurance cooperatives. CoOportunity's website boasts that Ringlee "has more than 30 years of senior financial experience [and] 20 years of entrepreneurship and venture investing. ..."

But there is much more to the Ringlee story. He founded YourVive, an Amazon-style online green shopping club, in 2009, as well as American Food Venture Forum and International Venture Forum on Food, both in 2007.

YourVive was intended to be a high-profile "green" online shopping club, according to CoOportunity's website. A promotional brochure for the startup described YourVive as an "online marketplace that will offer green products at affordable prices."

Read More: http://washingtonexaminer.com/failed-iowa-entrepreneur-awarded-112-million-for-obamacare-co-ops/article/2525456

The Truth About Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from my perspective

More on what caused our financial crisis:






To those who do not know my background....I worked in the Title business for 12 yrs. I can assure you that this economic tsunami of housing foreclosures was not a surprise to anyone in the mortgage, title, or real estate industry. I can personally attest to the fact that a large number of loans that closed in our office should have never made it to the closing table. The relaxed and/or non-existent credit guidelines truly allowed for almost anyone to get a loan. Thus the name "liar loans."

Most buyers had no skin in the game (no down payment). Instead, the seller would raise the price of the home and participate in a "down payment assistance program" that provided the necessary 3% down pmt for the buyer or they would have an 80/20 loan that would also not require any down payment. Most loans were sub-prime and/or had adjustable rates as well as pre-payment penalties. If the customer tried to pay off the loan either through a sale or refinance within 2-5 yrs they would have to pay a substantial penalty. The majority of 80/20 loans had inflated interest rates 2-5 pts. above the going interest rate.

Many times I would ask the loan officers "how in the world could you get this customer approved?" They would respond: "This will at least get them into a house and I tell them to refinance in a couple of yrs to get a better rate." Well those couple of years have now passed for those customers and it is now impossible to refinance.  Their homes aren't worth what they owe and now the requirements are stricter to qualify.  So these homeowners that shouldn't have been approved for the loan in the first place, are stuck with these loans...or worse yet, have been or will soon be foreclosed on.

About 5 years ago, the company I worked for lost it's biggest builder's business.  At that time, I discussed marketing options with the President of our company. Our company primarily worked with Realtors and had very little business with lenders (refinance business mainly). I told him that it was my opinion that we needed to aggressively market the mortgage lender business as it was my prediction that the market would soon experience a mortgage implosion greater than the late 70's and 80's. I could foresee that the main sellers in the near future were going to be the mortgage companies. It was obvious they were going to be holding the majority of homes for sale as foreclosures would explode.

I was given the title of "Title Police" by my fellow co-workers. Whenever I saw obvious signs of loan fraud, I would sound the bells and blow the whistle. My co-workers would joke that they were going to give me a whistle to sound when I suspected a "fishy" loan. I do have to say that the company I worked for was very conservative and always stood behind their employees if they felt the loan didn't pass the "smell test".  They would encourage us to pass any information to our underwriter to review in order to determine if we should decline closing the transaction.  Every time we had clear concerns,  they supported our decision to not close the loan. Unfortunately, other title companies weren't as conservative and the loan would be moved down the road to close. Even worse, they would close these loans even after we would suggest that they take a close look at the file as there were concerns about the loan.

Attached,are some videos John McCain introduced in 2005 that show that the Bush Administration, Alan Greenspan and John McCain had also seen this coming and tried to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The most compelling video shows Barney Frank and other Democrats defending this mortgage fraud frenzy and touted how stable the mortgage industry was and how it had moved to put more people into homes than ever before (exactly..these were people that should have never been allowed to get these loans)...all the while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "cookin their books" and lining the pockets of their top leaders that also were major contributors to the Democratic party and Barrack Obama specifically.

I also hold Acorn and others responsible as well.  They were the thugs threatening banks with lawsuits if they didn't relax their loan requirements. Freddie and Fannie helped perpetrate this loan fraud with complete support from Barney Franks, Franklin Raines and any number of willing participants that turned a blind eye for the sake of the almighty dollar or power.

The sad thing is that I am no economist, I have no special skills at predicting the future. While Obama and his Gangster Government want to continue to make Bush the demon behind this economic tsunami, I have to believe that if the mortgage lending had been reigned in as far back as 2001, we would not find ourselves digging out of the mess we are currently in.


Michele
"I realize that on the sea of life, I can't control the weather, but I can adjust my sails." unknown