Extortion Read Online Free
Author: Peter Schweizer
between $750,000 and $1.5 million in the PowerShares Dynamic Biotech and Genome ETF just weeks after the committee proposed to extend the exclusivity period. He bought the fund at about $16 per share. After Obamacare passed, the price jumped to $20, a 25% increase in six months.
How much money did Polis make? We will probably never know. Curiously, having made these aggressive transactions throughout 2009, in January 2010 he suddenly converted his assets to a “qualified blind trust.” As we will see later, these blind trusts are not really blind, and they don’t prevent a politician from providing political intelligence to those who manage the accounts. In Polis’s case, the person handling his trust was a longtime friend and large campaign contributor named Solomon Halpern. By creating the blind trust, Polis no longer had to disclose his stock transactions or profits.
Meanwhile, John and Teresa Heinz Kerry continued to trade. Along with Teva, during 2009 the Kerrys also picked up shares in ResMed—at least $200,000 worth. ResMed makes medical devices such as airway aids for sufferers of sleep apnea. The Kerrys managed to snatch up shares in the $20-to-$25 range. After health care reform passed, shares in the company surged to $34, as much as 71% higher than what the Kerrys paid for them. (Two years later, in the spring of 2011, ResMed’s stock price had fallen back below $30.) ResMed was a winner in the health care reform legislation—as Reuters declared—thanks in part to John Kerry’s efforts. In early versions of the health care bill, device makers like ResMed were to be taxed, starting in 2010, through an “industry fee.” In the final bill, fees for medical device makers were delayed until 2013, and the industry tax was replaced by a smaller sales tax (2.3%). Kerry was a strong opponent of higher taxes on medical device makers.
The Kerrys also bought between $250,000 and $500,000 in Thermo Fisher Scientific, which provides products and services to hospitals and medical centers. The firm had a lot at stake with health care reform. The Kerrys bought the stake at around $35 a share. After the reform bill became law, the stock was selling at more than $50 a share—a jump of more than 40%.
While the Kerrys were buying Obamacare winners, they were dumping losers. In the final bill, pharma was a winner, the health insurance industry was a big loser. Not coincidentally, the Kerrys had been selling all their stock in health insurance companies. One such company, United Health, offers Medicare insurance. The legislation dictated lower reimbursements for Medicare procedures. Lifetime coverage limits and protection against preexisting medical conditions were removed—extremely popular aspects of the bill, to be sure, but they squeezed United Health’s bottom line. By the end of June 2009, the Kerrys had sold all of their shares in United Health. They also dropped their investment in Wellpoint, another health benefits company. Six weeks later, Kerry introduced an amendment to tax generous health care plans, which would clearly hurt companies like those whose stock he had just sold. 12
Kerry’s profitable history of congressional trading does not begin and end with the debate over President Obama’s bill in 2009. Indeed, some of his most dramatic and amazingly well-timed trades occurred earlier, during other health-care-related high-stakes legislative battles. Some of his biggest scores were tied to his knowledge of obscure matters that had huge ramifications for certain companies.
In May 2007, a government agency called the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services was looking at two drugs that were used to treat anemia in cancer patients. The agency had to decide: Did Johnson & Johnson’s Procrit and Amgen’s Aranesp warrant reimbursement under Medicare? Johnson & Johnson was a large, diversified company with lots of products, so rejection of its drug would not be critical. But for Amgen, losing
How much money did Polis make? We will probably never know. Curiously, having made these aggressive transactions throughout 2009, in January 2010 he suddenly converted his assets to a “qualified blind trust.” As we will see later, these blind trusts are not really blind, and they don’t prevent a politician from providing political intelligence to those who manage the accounts. In Polis’s case, the person handling his trust was a longtime friend and large campaign contributor named Solomon Halpern. By creating the blind trust, Polis no longer had to disclose his stock transactions or profits.
Meanwhile, John and Teresa Heinz Kerry continued to trade. Along with Teva, during 2009 the Kerrys also picked up shares in ResMed—at least $200,000 worth. ResMed makes medical devices such as airway aids for sufferers of sleep apnea. The Kerrys managed to snatch up shares in the $20-to-$25 range. After health care reform passed, shares in the company surged to $34, as much as 71% higher than what the Kerrys paid for them. (Two years later, in the spring of 2011, ResMed’s stock price had fallen back below $30.) ResMed was a winner in the health care reform legislation—as Reuters declared—thanks in part to John Kerry’s efforts. In early versions of the health care bill, device makers like ResMed were to be taxed, starting in 2010, through an “industry fee.” In the final bill, fees for medical device makers were delayed until 2013, and the industry tax was replaced by a smaller sales tax (2.3%). Kerry was a strong opponent of higher taxes on medical device makers.
The Kerrys also bought between $250,000 and $500,000 in Thermo Fisher Scientific, which provides products and services to hospitals and medical centers. The firm had a lot at stake with health care reform. The Kerrys bought the stake at around $35 a share. After the reform bill became law, the stock was selling at more than $50 a share—a jump of more than 40%.
While the Kerrys were buying Obamacare winners, they were dumping losers. In the final bill, pharma was a winner, the health insurance industry was a big loser. Not coincidentally, the Kerrys had been selling all their stock in health insurance companies. One such company, United Health, offers Medicare insurance. The legislation dictated lower reimbursements for Medicare procedures. Lifetime coverage limits and protection against preexisting medical conditions were removed—extremely popular aspects of the bill, to be sure, but they squeezed United Health’s bottom line. By the end of June 2009, the Kerrys had sold all of their shares in United Health. They also dropped their investment in Wellpoint, another health benefits company. Six weeks later, Kerry introduced an amendment to tax generous health care plans, which would clearly hurt companies like those whose stock he had just sold. 12
Kerry’s profitable history of congressional trading does not begin and end with the debate over President Obama’s bill in 2009. Indeed, some of his most dramatic and amazingly well-timed trades occurred earlier, during other health-care-related high-stakes legislative battles. Some of his biggest scores were tied to his knowledge of obscure matters that had huge ramifications for certain companies.
In May 2007, a government agency called the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services was looking at two drugs that were used to treat anemia in cancer patients. The agency had to decide: Did Johnson & Johnson’s Procrit and Amgen’s Aranesp warrant reimbursement under Medicare? Johnson & Johnson was a large, diversified company with lots of products, so rejection of its drug would not be critical. But for Amgen, losing
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