Defense Contractors Now Taking Over Health Care Business
by John Lawrence, April 20, 2018
Who'd have thunk it? Large defense contractors like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are now getting contracts from Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide health care services largely as a result of the advent of Obamacare. In 2014 it looked like defense spending had slowed down so the defense contractors decided to get into another business on top of its war related business. Soon after Congress passed the landmark Affordable Care Act, General Dynamics decided to expand its business related to health care. Its 2011 purchase of health-data firm Vangent instantly made it the largest contractor to Medicare and Medicaid, the huge government health plans for seniors and the poor.
Even though budgets were tight, the Department of Health and Human Services had doubled their budget to $21 billion annually and it was expected to continue rising. The Washington Post reported:
HHS has become the No. 3 contracting agency, thanks to health-law spending combined with outlays for computer upgrades and the Medicare drug program that grew in the administration of President George W. Bush. HHS outranks NASA and the Department of Homeland Security in business deals and spends more than the Justice, Transportation, Treasury and Agriculture departments combined, federal data shows.
If health care is “the new oil,” as some investors hope, HHS is one of the richest fields — along with massive opportunities in health-related computer spending by Defense, Veterans Affairs and Treasury.
“The DOD market is very weak,” said Steve Kelman, a Harvard management professor and contracting specialist. “The two growth markets are cybersecurity and health care. So everybody’s trying to get into those.”
The new money is buying medical-records software, insurance Web sites, claims processing, data analysis, computer system overhauls, consumer education and consulting expertise to control costs and identify fraud.
So is the military-industrial complex taking over every aspect of American society? It seems so. Anywhere there is a profit to be made, these vultures will insinuate themselves into the government coffers with their well-oiled lobbyist machine and contacts with Congressmen and women. It's the complete militarization of the American economy. Anywhere there is a buck to be made off of the American taxpayer, defense corporations will be there to make it. Then they will apply the same techniques they employed in the defense sector: immense CEO salaries, budget overruns, cost plus contracts. Already the military-industrial complex brags about all the "good" it's done for civilian society from the invention of Tang to the invention of the internet.
The US military and related contractors have become the central focus of American life from employment opportunities with good benefits in the military itself to corporate jobs with benefits. Elsewhere deunionization has left workers with few benefits. Now health care has come under its sway so regardless of the health care results that the American people actually get, defense contractors will be reaping the lion's share of the profits and taking over every aspect of American life.
