U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is a vocal
critic of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act and its
glitch-stricken website, HealthCare.gov, repeatedly calling for repeal
of the law "root and branch."
"At this point, senators from both
parties can agree: HealthCare.gov is a rolling disaster. Every day seems
to bring more, newer comic calamity," McConnell, R-Ky., said Oct. 29 in
a Senate floor speech. "The only thing the website seems to be good for
right now is creating punch lines for late-night comedians."
However,
since 2011, McConnell has accepted more than $75,000 in political
donations from health care giant UnitedHealth Group, which owns the
technology company that helped build and launch HealthCare.gov for a
reported $155 million and now is responsible for fixing it.
The
donations came from UnitedHealth's political action committee and five
of its top executives; they went to McConnell's 2014 re-election
campaign and two fundraising committees that he oversees, the Bluegrass
Committee and the McConnell-Cornyn Leadership Victory Committee.
UnitedHealth
also co-hosted a $1,000-per-person fundraising dinner for McConnell's
campaign last December in Washington, D.C. And the company, based in
Minnetonka, Minn., retains former McConnell chief of staff Billy Piper
as a Washington lobbyist to work on its behalf in Congress on
implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Senate records show.
UnitedHealth,
which tends to favor incumbent Democrats and Republicans as it gives
more than $1 million in political donations during a typical two-year
election cycle, has expressed optimism about the health care law.
"UnitedHealth
Group strongly supports making high-quality health care accessible and
affordable for everyone," it stated in a news release last year.
Josh
Holmes, a McConnell aide on loan to the National Republican Senatorial
Committee, said Thursday there is no indication that UnitedHealth's
donations have weakened McConnell's opposition to the health law.
Two
conservative groups, however, said UnitedHealth's support of McConnell
is further evidence that his only true ideology is power. They already
have criticized McConnell for not fully supporting Sen. Ted Cruz,
R-Texas, and others who fight to defund the health care law, which they
call Obamacare.
"Mitch McConnell gets money from lots of
corporations for many different reasons, but his close ties to this one
makes it unique," said Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate
Conservatives Fund, which has endorsed Louisville businessman Matt Bevin
over McConnell in the Republican primary next May.
"This could
explain why Mitch McConnell has been so reluctant to oppose funding for
the implementation of Obamacare. He and his closest allies apparently
have a financial interest in seeing it go forward," Hoskins said.
Another
conservative critic, Daniel Horowitz, policy director at the Madison
Project, said "the entire McConnell web," including his corporate donors
and aides-turned-lobbyists, sees a chance to make money off Obamacare,
so McConnell won't stand in the law's way.
"McConnell isn't a
liberal, a conservative or a moderate," said Horowitz, whose group also
has endorsed Bevin. "His ideology is power. That's all he cares about."
Holmes
noted that UnitedHealth donates to many politicians, including $5,000
last year to Ted Cruz and $2,000 to the leadership committee of Sen.
Rand Paul, R-Ky., both of whom are prominent foes of the Affordable Care
Act.
"Matt Bevin is going to need more than a fake MIT diploma to
dupe people into believing that the most prominent opponents of
Obamacare, like Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, are not
committed to the cause because they receive political support from
UnitedHealth," Holmes said. "Clearly, everyone knows where they stand on
getting this awful law off the books."
McConnell has repeatedly
criticized likely Democratic Senate nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes in
recent days for refusing to call for repeal of the health care law.
Grimes,
who has not reported receiving any donations from UnitedHealth's
political action committee since entering the race in July, has praised
portions of the law while calling for changes and delays to some of its
requirements.
UnitedHealth's Washington-based vice president for
government affairs, Daniel Keniry, who oversees the company's political
donations and has personally given $7,500 to McConnell's committees
since 2011, did not return repeated calls seeking comment Thursday. Nor
did a corporate spokesman at the company's Minnesota headquarters.
UnitedHealth,
best known for its health insurance division, owns Quality Software
Services Inc., which helped build and launch HealthCare.gov along with
another private contractor, CGI Federal of Fairfax, Va. Both companies
faced sharp criticism in congressional hearings after the website failed
to successfully launch in October. CGI has blamed QSSI for providing
the data services hub that caused the first "log jam" on the site.
"We
absolutely take accountability for those first days when our tool was
part of the issue in terms of being able to handle all of the unexpected
volume. And we absolutely will take accountability for helping in any
way we can to help this project go forward," Andrew Slavitt, a senior
QSSI executive, testified Oct. 24 before the House Energy and Commerce
Committee.
Piper, who left McConnell's office in early 2011 for
the Washington lobbying firm of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, also
did not return repeated calls seeking comment Thursday. Piper has given
$7,000 to McConnell's campaign and a related committee, McConnell
Victory Kentucky, since 2011.
Senate records show that Piper has
several other clients who pay him for his assistance in implementing the
Affordable Care Act, including the Federation of American Hospitals.
The FAH has praised the health care law for making life easier for
patients. The group's political action committee has given a total of
$15,000 since 2011 to McConnell's campaign and to his Bluegrass
Committee.
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