Life imitates The Onion

Bob posted on this earlier, but I wanted to add my $.02, as well.

It seems we've been down this road before, but this time with a twist:

"FTC cracks down on a health insurance scam ... Consumers were charged $50 up to several hundred dollars initially, the FTC said, and then a monthly fee of $40 to $1,000 for the purported health insurance."

You're forgiven if you thought "gee, musta been a heckuva subsidy," but in this case, it's simpler: the perps were passing off medical discount cards as true insurance. We've actually blogged on this practice before; back then, various state insurance departments were cracking down on these outfits. Now they've made an honest-to-goodness Federal case out of it.

Now, you're probably asking yourself: "how did the Fed's know that these were scam sites?"

Simple: They worked.

And speaking of frauds, the Feds are fairly nonplussed at pulling their own little scam, at least according to the legal eagles at Judicial Watch:

"At a Wednesday press conference to announce the filing of a lawsuit challenging health insurance coverage for members of Congress through the District of Columbia’s small business exchange, Judicial Watch President Thomas Fitton called the arrangement “fraud.”

Turns out, our Betters in DC© have been buying coverage off the Capital's Small Business (SHOP) Exchange site [ed: even more evidence of their recklessness, no?]; the JW folks argue that this avenue is open only to small businesses, of which Congress isn't one. Even better, at least a few of these rocket surgeons seem to have applied, and been approved for, a subsidy.

Your tax dollars at work.