Good News: Illinois Hired Convicted Terrorist as Obamacare Navigator

During her tenure as an Obamacare "navigator," Rasmieh Yousef Odeh had access to Illinois consumers' sensitive personal data. Unbeknownst to those citizens, and to her employer, Ms. Odeh has an extremely sordid past. She was convicted for her role in three bombings, including one that killed two innocent people at an Israeli supermarket in the late 1960's:

 Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted in Israel for her role in several bombings, including the 1969 attack on an upscale Shufersol grocery store, which killed two Hebrew University students who had stopped in to buy groceries for a hiking trip in the Jerusalem hills. Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe were killed by a bomb hidden in a candy box tucked on a shelf, which also injured nine or 10 others, according to a website maintained by the Israeli government to commemorate terror victims. The Illinois Department of Insurance quietly revoked Odeh’s certification as a Navigator In-Person Counselor on November 24, explaining in a disciplinary report that the decision was “based on an investigation which revealed that she had been convicted in Israel for her role in the bombings of a supermarket and the British Consulate in Jerusalem and failed to reveal the conviction on her application.”

 Fortunately, Illinois officials pulled the plug on this woman relatively quickly; they were tipped off to her terrorist status by a US Attorney's office in Michigan. Disconcertingly, the state's background check didn't catch this -- shall we say -- rather significant omission from her resume. Even more alarming is the fact that the federal government doesn't even require states to conduct any criminal background checks on Obamacare navigators, a stunning reality confirmed by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in Congressional testimony in November:

National Review reported last month that Obamacare's 'Covered California' employed at least 43 ex-criminals as navigators, including several individuals with fraud convictions. Elsewhere in Obamacare news, a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows public support for the law still underwater by double-digits, with just 35 percent of Americans expressing a favorable opinion of it. Even more problematic, frets the Huffington Post, are sentiments among uninsured Americans -- the very people for whom the law was ostensibly passed to help:

 Fifty-six percent of those who identified as uninsured in a new poll conducted in February by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a research institution, had an unfavorable view of the health care reform law, compared to just 22 percent who said they view it favorably. The uninsured now see Obamacare less favorably than they did when the enrollment period began in October. As recently as September, more uninsured approved of the law than disapproved. Thesurvey results illustrate just how deep a hole the Obama administration is in when it comes to gaining the support of those the law is most intended to benefit.

This result mirrors an NBC/WSJ poll taken in December, in which uninsured Americans disapproved of Obamacare by a two-to-one margin. KKF now pegs that disparity at 22/56, noting that negative opinions have increased steadily since October's catastrophic rollout.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/02/27/good-news-illinois-hired-convicted-terrorist-as-obamacare-navigator-n1801163