{"id":196170,"date":"2008-05-20T05:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T10:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/20\/signs-of-progress-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-they-are-entering-the-modern-financial-system\/"},"modified":"2008-05-20T05:02:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-20T10:02:00","slug":"signs-of-progress-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-they-are-entering-the-modern-financial-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/20\/signs-of-progress-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-they-are-entering-the-modern-financial-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of Progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, They Are Entering the Modern Financial System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Specifically insurance fraud, but it&#8217;s only the contractors, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/nation\/washington\/articles\/2008\/05\/15\/contractors_insurance_firms_gouging_taxpayers_panel_says\/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+National+news\">have conspired with insurance companies to stick it to the tax payers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s basically kickbacks.  The contractors negotiate their own insurance deals, which are over priced, and they get commissions from the insurers:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>KBR Inc., one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, paid the insurance giant AIG $284 million for medical and disability coverage under the Defense Base Act, a reference to the federal law mandating the insurance. Due to the way KBR&#8217;s contract is structured, this premium, along with an $8 million markup for KBR, gets billed to the taxpayer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Out of this amount, just $73 million actually goes to injured contractors, and AIG and KBR pocket over $100 million as profit,&#8221; Waxman said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lovely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Specifically insurance fraud, but it&#8217;s only the contractors, who have conspired with insurance companies to stick it to the tax payers. It&#8217;s basically kickbacks. The contractors negotiate their own insurance deals, which are over priced, and they get commissions from the insurers: KBR Inc., one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, paid the insurance &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,970,1045,1063],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-corruption","category-insurance","category-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}