20% of New Health Care Waivers Go To Nancy Pelosi’s District

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As NewsBusters previously noted, there were 204…waivers issued [for the new health care law] in April, and almost 20% of them went to establishments in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) San Francisco district.

The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle reported Tuesday:

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20% of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.

Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.

For instance, Boboquivari’s restaurant in Pelosi’s district in San Francisco got a waiver from Obamacare. Boboquivari’s advertises $59 porterhouse steaks, $39 filet mignons and $35 crab dinners.

Boyle noted a number of the establishments getting these waivers are very high-priced eateries in Pelosi’s district…

As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey noted Tuesday:

[O]ne might think that a restaurant that charges $59 for a porterhouse steak as Boboquivari’s does could afford to fit its health care plan to Pelosi’s own specifications. The same goes for Café Mason, with its $60 entrees, and Tru Spa, which Allure Magazine calls “the best day spa in San Francisco.” If these kinds of high-tone joints can’t afford ObamaCare, then how can anyone else?

The odds of one Representative getting 20% of a batch of waivers from the Obama administration as a coincidence seems rather high. Once again, we have to wonder exactly how waiver applications are judged and approved. With its high percentage of unions and party leader constituents, this is looking more and more like a mechanism for political payoffs. …

Just think if current Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh.) had procured these waivers for his district in Ohio. Can you imagine the media uproar?

Let’s see whether [the media reports on this unfair practice].