Late yesterday, MSNBC led with breaking news from Michael Issikoff, the reporter who broke many Whitewater/Lewinsky-related stories during the Clinton era, that Bachmann had also misrepresented the level to which her husband’s Christianist counseling clinic in Minnesota has depended on government hand-outs:
While [she] has forcefully denounced the Medicaid program for swelling the “welfare rolls,” the mental health clinic run by her husband has been collecting annual Medicaid payments totaling over $137,000 for the treatment of patients since 2005, according to new figures obtained by NBC News…
The $161,000 in payments from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to her husband’s clinic appear to contradict some of Michelle Bachmann’s public accounts this week when she was first asked about the extent to which her family has benefited from government aid.
This contradicts what Bachmann said about socialist-style funding of her husband’s clinic on “Fox News Sunday”:
Questions about the Bachmann family’s receipt of government funds arose this week after a Los Angeles Times story reported that a family farm in which Michelle Bachmann is a partner had received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies.
When asked by anchor Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” about the story’s assertion that her husband’s counseling clinic had also gotten federal and state funds, Bachmann replied that it was “one-time training money that came from the federal government. And it certainly didn’t help our clinic.”
At another point, she said, “My husband and I did not get the money,” adding that it was “mental health training money that went to the employees.”
None of that was true:
[State] records show that Bachmann & Associates has been collecting payments under the Minnesota’s Medicaid program every year for the past six years. Karen Smigielski, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services, said the state’s Medicaid program is funded “about 50-50” with federal and state monies. The funds to Bachmann & Associates are for the treatment of low-income mentally ill patients and are based on a “fee for service” basis, meaning the clinic was reimbursed by Medicaid for the services it provided.
Smigielski added that these were not the only government funds that Bachmann & Associates has received. The clinic also participates in managed-care plans that are reimbursed under a separate state-funded Minnesota Health Care program. But the state does not have any records of payment information to the individual clinics that participate. (During her Fox News appearance, Bachmann was not asked about Medicaid payments, and she made no mention of them.)
Another state official, Patrice Vick, communications manager for the Human Services Department, said she was puzzled by Michelle Bachmann’s assertion on the broadcast that the funds under the state grant went to employees. While the grant was to train employees to help them treat chemical dependency, the money did not go directly to those being trained, she said. “It went to the clinic,” Vick said.
“The contract was with the clinic,” Vick added later. But she had no immediate information about whether the clinic passed it along directly to the employees being trained or used it to cover its costs of training.
Thanks so much for the fact filled article. But what is really so sad about it all is that the right doesn’t care if she lies and will repeat them over and over again as if they are the truth.
In a way it almost scares me. They are more then willing to rewrite history to defend her.
You left out the questions about the 23 foster children she claims to have raised: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20072121-503544.html