WASHINGTON - Almost immediately after President Obama’s healthcare reform law passed last year there was a scramble by businesses, States, unions, and other groups to obtain waivers from the many burdensome job-destroying aspects of the President’s health care overhaul. 

The Administration’s waiver process and their justification for granting some waivers and denying others remains shrouded in secrecy.  However, the identities of the applicants who were granted waivers by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been confirmed.  According to HHS, more than 1,400 waivers have been granted.

While we still do not know why waivers were granted, Congresswoman Jenkins and her staff have compiled the available information on these waivers on the attached spreadsheet and mapped the locations of the waiver recipients on the following map. LINK

As with many aspects of the Obamacare package, when you examine the facts and figures of the waiver program the shocking results only lead to more questions, for example:

·         Does the party of your Representative matter? While Republicans represent 55% of the districts in the House of Representatives, 58% of the Obamacare waivers have been awarded to organizations in districts represented by Democrats.

·         Does your vote for President matter? While President Obama received 52.9% of the vote in the 2008 election, the President received a whopping 58.4% on average from the district of an organization that received waivers.

·         Do you just need to know (Democrat) people in high places? One of the chief architects of the Obamacare package was Former-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yet, at 51, her district has received the most waivers of any Congressional district in the country.

Congresswoman Jenkins released the following statement in response to these troubling findings:

“Last year I voted against the President’s health care reform package and this year I fulfilled my pledge to the people of Kansas by voting to repeal this job-killing, government takeover our health care system. Since then, the lack of transparency in the closed door waiver process has been truly disturbing, and the folks at home feel like the Obama Administration is simply picking winners and losers.”

“I hope the waiver information we have compiled is as enlightening to the American people as it was to us, and spurs the President to back up his words with action and make this waiver process open and transparent.  We don’t have all the information. We only have what the President gave us.  However, what information we do have is disturbing and makes the calls for full disclosure of the process even more powerful. The American people deserve the truth and American businesses deserve a fair chance at certainty.  The only truly fair response is to grant every American a waiver and repeal Obamacare, but at a minimum, the American people deserve the truth.”

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The waivers map and downloadable spreadsheet can be found on Congresswoman Jenkins Website HERE.

NOTE: Where the waiver markers are in a high density on the map you see the circles with the numbering of markers in that area.  You can click on the circles to zoom in and see the individual markers.