Michelle Bachmann's hubby's clinic got Medicaid payments topping $137,000 for 6 years

[woolfe9999]

How is "accepting Medicaid payments" equivalent to "benefitting from medicaid"? Depending on the area of practice, Medicaid business may well be a loss leader that you've just got to do to maintain goodwill in a community. Unless somebody does a breakdown of how the Medicaid rates collected by this specific clinic compare to the non-medicaid rates they get from their other business, this is a meaningless "issue".

As for Bachmann herself, there are plenty of good reasons not to vote for her without making yourself look stupid by manufacturing fake stories about nothing at all.

I don't think accepting the Medicaid payments for patient care is a big deal at all. I do think appying for Medicaid grants is more noteworthy. In applying for the grant, you aren't getting reimbursed for services. You're just asking to be given tax payer money. That would seem to violate the principles that Bachmann purports to believe in, no?

 

[trenchfoot]

Frick'in repubs/teabaggers wanting to have it both ways....please make up your frick'in minds.

So you're vehemently against having the government provide entitlement programs but you're totally for them whenever you can exploit them for personal benefit?

From the way you guys get totally up in arms about gov't programs benefitting primarily the middle class and the poor I'd have thought you guys would be out at Bachmann's hubbys place with pitchforks and torches demanding he cease wasting your tax dollars, or, treating him like you treat other health care providers who waste your tax dollars on the middle class and the poor like planned parenthood, etc.

You guys make me LOL. No wonder I so do enjoy being in here. Class act all the way around.

 

[nonlnear]

I don't think accepting the Medicaid payments for patient care is a big deal at all. I do think appying for Medicaid grants is more noteworthy. In applying for the grant, you aren't getting reimbursed for services. You're just asking to be given tax payer money. That would seem to violate the principles that Bachmann purports to believe in, no?

That's not how grants work at all. These aren''t Pell grants...

The grants were provided to fund the provision of specific services. The same argumetn applies, albeit in weaker form. IUf the payment rates for these grants are comparable to rates that could be earned in other research programs, or devoting the resources of one's practice to other activities, then it's not aprticularly "beneficial". A well connected psychologist who's married to a high powered politician could be raking it in providing celebrity rehab services but instead chooses to work with addicts on a Medicaid grant. That really doesn't sound like it's a particular "benefit" to him unless you count the emotional value he apparently gets out of working with poor needy people for a relatively modest level of pay. But then when you put it that way the rage kind of withers, leaving yellow journalists with no story...

 

[Red Dawn]

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/politics/congress/Bachmann-Clinic%3A-$137K-Gov%27t-Funds-Annually-jun-29-2011




Imagine that! The self-anointed Queen of the Tea Party benefiting off a "gubment" program.

This a sample of what it gets you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvwP4vHEc-I

Bitch is a nutjob but I see nothing wrong here. Sounds like you are starting to catch the ProJo and Whitey007 Syndrome of Faux Outrage. Seek help or you'll end up being as disregarded as them.

 

[Engineer]

If he was doing it legally, not much to gripe about.

 

[Lanyap]

The link posted in OP seems rather slanted. Here is the original source as far as I can tell.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4357055..._2012/t/bachmanns-husband-got-medicaid-funds/

The $137k is the total for tha past 6 years and represents medicaid insurance payments made to the clinic for handling poor folks mental health issues. That's $23k per year and appears to be payment for services renderred. That's not a lot of money and I would expect that they lost money on this deal unless I'm missing something.

The $24k was a grant for employee training most likely to deal with said poor folks and filing medicaid.

The previously unreported payments are on top of the $24,000 in federal and state funds that Bachmann & Associates, the clinic founded by Marcus Bachmann, a clinical therapist, received in recent years under a state grant to train its employees, state records show.

I don't see the outrage here.

 

[UberNeuman]

I don't see the outrage here.

Outrage, no - but the STUNNING hypocrisy is a worthy meal to chew on...

 

[nonlnear]

Outrage, no - but the STUNNING hypocrisy is a worthy meal to chew on...

No.

 

[UberNeuman]

No.

No? How so? can I milk the system for what I can get - but then my life partner gets to decry government waste.

 

[nonlnear]

No? How so? can I milk the system for what I can get - but then my life partner gets to decry government waste.

Read the thread you lazy hack.

 

[UberNeuman]

Read the thread you lazy hack.

No, sir - sum it up... What am I not seeing....

 

[UberNeuman]

Some of you rightwingers want it both ways.... You want to game the system, then stand back and whine about the gaming of the system....

\haha.... fools...

 

[dali71]

BTW, I'm getting my ass handed to me!

ftfy

 

[nonlnear]

Some of you rightwingers want it both ways.... You want to game the system, then stand back and whine about the gaming of the system....

\haha.... fools...

I'll reply to your PM here in the thread, where it belongs:

Still here....
.... anything to say...?

About what? You haven't added anything to the conversation. No facts, and no arguments. I don't know why you feel the need to use PMs. It's one thing to use PMs to have an in depth discussion about some tangent because you don't want to derail a thread, but it's kind of pathetic to use PMs just to beg for attention. If you have a point to make, do it in the thread - like this.

 

[UberNeuman]

I'll reply to your PM here in the thread, where it belongs:
About what? You haven't added anything to the conversation. No facts, and no arguments. I don't know why you feel the need to use PMs. It's one thing to use PMs to have an in depth discussion about some tangent because you don't want to derail a thread, but it's kind of pathetic to use PMs just to beg for attention. If you have a point to make, do it in the thread - like this.

My PM to you, sir - was a simple matter of respect....

\as to the topic - how can one decry government benefits when they may choose to take those benefits....

 

[Slew Foot]

Haha stupid libs. OHHHHHYYYY MYYY GOD THEY GOT $24,000/yr TO TREAT POOR PEOPLE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUESESE!!!! The dude probably lost a ton of money on that deal, he could have been seeing real paying patients or playing golf or something.

 

[nonlnear]

My PM to you, sir - was a simple matter of respect....

\as to the topic - how can one decry government benefits when they may choose to take those benefits....

I haven't seen evidence that it was a net benefit. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but the story presented fails to make the case. As far as I can tell the man did the equivalent of an MSF tour here at home.

It's almost like some folks decided to swift boat Bachmann's husband...

 

[UberNeuman]

I haven't seen evidence that it was a net benefit. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but the story presented fails to make the case. As far as I can tell the man did the equivalent of an MSF tour here at home.

Would you not agree it's a another gaming of the system? Be if left or right - it's still that of taking advantage of what one can get away with?

 

[nonlnear]

Would you not agree it's a another gaming of the system? Be if left or right - it's still that of taking advantage of what one can get away with?

I don't agree that getting a grant is necessarily an advantage. If you've ever had any experience with the federal grants system it's a pain in the ass. I left academia in part because the grants process was so terribly tedious and time consuming. $137K over six years is quite a pittance, even before you factor in the time it takes to apply for, win, and follow up such a grant. It's called a grant, but it's actually a really big job.

Also I haven't seen any evidence that any system was "gamed". Did you? Was there malfeasance? Fraud? Did it come from a grant "slush fund" ear-marked for political favorites where the applications were fast-tracked and not followed up on? (And if so, why was the amount so damn small?)

What is so hard about attacking Bachmann on her platform? I dislike it almost as much as hard left Democrats do. I don't feel the need to manufacture idiotic stories about psychologists deciding to take a crappy paying stint with junkies and spin it into moronic indignation.

 

[UberNeuman]

What is so hard about attacking Bachmann on her platform?

Dear sir... She is "attacking" you... at your core... and that's not to say some grand "lib" will sweep in to protect you....

\let us not pretend...

 

[shira]

How is getting paid for services rendered benefiting from a government program? You suggesting he shouldn't see people on the program? How progressive.

Selectively misreading articles again?

Bachmann requested stimulus funds to support projects in her district. Although she has been a fierce critic of earmarks — calling them "part of the root problem with Washington's spending addiction" — the congresswoman nonetheless argued recently that transportation projects should not be considered congressional pork.

Bachmann said in December that the subsidies went to her in-laws and she never received "one penny" from the farm, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. However, in financial disclosure forms, she reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.

Yeah, Bachmann is a principled, truth-teller.

 

[nonlnear]

Dear sir... She is "attacking" you... at your core... and that not to say some grand "lib" will sweep in to protect you....

\let us not pretend...

I think you might have misread my tone. I meant that it is really easy to attack her platform because she is horrible and stands for most of the worst attributes of the GOP, while pretending to be "different". The last thing the GOP needs is to put a social conservative up front for this race. After all, social conservatives are inevitably stooges used by the corporatist pigs who run the GOP to distract the base from their rampant theft. Just beat the abortion drum (and the "tough on crime" one) over and over and the GOP base will look the other way while the pigs stuff their pockets. The great thing about that plan is that, for all the effort poured into GOP social issues, they never really go anywhere, so the trick is guaranteed to work for decades.

 

[shira]

I'm just pointing out that if spouses are ok, then let's trout out michelle as the embarassment she is.

I do find it funny how a conservative women scares the crap out of the left and they go into full on dig up dirt, smear, attack mode.

Bachmann doesn't "scare the crap" out of anyone. Frankly, I'd love her to win the nomination, thereby guaranteeing another four years for Obama.

Bachmann attracts so much attention because she's such a mediocrity, like almost all of the rest of the right-wing dwarfs running for President. Stories about her shortcomings are the journalistic equivalent to a kid poking a stick at fresh dog poop.

 

[UberNeuman]

I think you might have misread my tone. I meant that it is really easy to attack her platform because she is horrible and stands for most of the worst attributes of the GOP, while pretending to be "different". The last thing the GOP needs is to put a social conservative up front for this race. After all, social conservatives are inevitably stooges used by the corporatist pigs who run the GOP to distract the base from their rampant theft. Just beat the abortion drum (and the "tough on crime" one) over and over and the GOP base will look the other way while the pigs stuff their pockets. The great thing about that plan is that, for all the effort poured into GOP social issues, they never really go anywhere, so the trick is guaranteed to work for decades.

Well... let's cut to the quick... you're the leech that she'd love LOVE - to pour salt on....

 

[nonlnear]

Well... let's cut to the quick... you're the leech that she'd love LOVE - to pour salt on....

I've never listened to a Bachmann speech for more than about 20 seconds at a time (and that was a feat I might add!). Is that a metaphor she uses for some particular group? I don't imagine she uses hostile imagery for the group that she's pretending to be a part of. (You know, people who actually want a limited federal government with significantly reduced mandates, fewer federal crimes, fewer federal departments, and much smaller budgets.)