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Contractors from the Bagram Air Field Retrosort Yard load a water tank onto a contracted transportation truck. (Photo: 1st Lt. Henry Chan, 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion Public Affairs/U.S. Army)
Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two decades raked in nearly $108 billion--funds that "were distributed and spent with a significant lack of transparency," according to a report published Tuesday.
"These contracts show the shadowy 'camo economy' at work in Afghanistan."
"These contracts show the shadowy 'camo economy' at work in Afghanistan," said report author Heidi Peltier, director of programs for the Costs of War Project at Brown Univesity's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
"Military contracting obscures where and how taxpayer money flows, who profits, and how much is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse," she added. "It also makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed through military contracting."
Based on Peltier's review of public contracting databases--USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System--just over a dozen U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors got more than $44 billion, or about 41% of the almost $108 billion, from 2002 to this year.
As the document details:
In addition, thousands of smaller companies earned billions in contract spending, and about one-third of the contracts (in dollar terms) went to companies that are listed as "undisclosed" or "miscellaneous" in the data. These designations result from the contracts being given to foreign companies without a "DUNS" number, or they are undisclosed with national security or protection as a claimed rationale for secrecy. Whatever the reason, this creates an opacity that makes it impossible to know who exactly received U.S. taxpayer funds, what work was performed, how much profit was earned, and whether the intended purposes of the contracts were served.
Inadequate oversight, coupled with the issue of sub-contracting, results in a system in which the U.S. government pays contractors who then leave a trail of spending that is nearly impossible to follow.
"A number of companies performed services in Afghanistan under multiple different business names," the analysis notes. "A generous interpretation of this is that the businesses pursuing such practices were in fact performing different services. A less generous interpretation is that businesses can obscure how many contracts they are receiving as well as circumvent issues of ineligibility by operating under different names."
The report emphasizes that the almost $108 billion that Peltier focused on is "in addition to the trillions of dollars spent on DOD contracts performed in the U.S. over that period."
The contractors examined by Peltier were paid for construction, lodging, office supplies, refrigeration equipment, transportation, waste disposal, and weapons maintenance in the war-torn country. They operated various facilities--such as dining and troop housing--and were contracted for accounting, fuel, food, guard, and surveillance services.
During the nearly two-decade U.S. occupation, the analysis states, "contractors provided all types of goods and services that were essential to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, including services (such as weapons maintenance and fuel supply) that made the U.S. military dependent on and arguably vulnerable to the performance of contractors."
"Most contracts for work in Afghanistan ended or were rescinded by August 31, 2021, when U.S. troops fully withdrew," the report says. "Some contractor presence may remain, though it is difficult to know which companies and how many employees could still be working in service of the U.S. government in that country."
\u201cBreaking: Nearly one year after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, our latest report finds that $108 billion went to contractors working inside the country during the 20-year war. Over 1/3 of this total went to undisclosed recipients. [1/7] https://t.co/NT7hNTf3Fg\u201d— The Costs of War Project (@The Costs of War Project) 1660055042
Transparency is a major focus of the document, which highlights that "lack of oversight by the Department of Defense, combined with waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of both contractors and government employees, resulted in billions of misallocated and misspent taxpayer dollars."
The analysis cites reports by the DOD Inspector General (DODIG) and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In one case involving insufficient voucher reviews for a major contract from 2015 to 2017, the new report notes, "one-fifth of them had questionable or undocumented expenses, totaling over $536 million."
In another case, SIGAR found that "a subcontractor of Lockheed Martin submitted fraudulent invoices that resulted in overbilling the Department of Defense millions of dollars."
Peltier's report also points to government watchdogs' findings of "incomplete and shoddy construction of school buildings, warehouses, and other facilities" as well as "bribery of U.S. officials to secure contracts."
SIGAR, in its quarterly report to Congress this past January, "conservatively estimated nearly 30% of U.S. appropriations for Afghanistan reconstruction from 2009 to 2019 was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse." The Pentagon was responsible for the bulk of that spending.
The Brown analysis explains that "the overpayment of illegitimate expenses, and the lack of oversight of contracts by DOD was compounded by yet another problem: In some cases, contractors were hired to perform oversight of other contractors, in lieu of the oversight that should have been performed by DOD."
\u201cWhat\u2019s more, this figure is just a fraction of the over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending since the start of the war in Afghanistan in total, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors. [3/7] https://t.co/PcfqZ3arp0\u201d— The Costs of War Project (@The Costs of War Project) 1660055042
Peltier told Responsible Statecraft--which exclusively reported on the new document--that the DODIG "also found oversight by the DOD itself to be insufficient or poorly executed, so really the oversight problems are both 'the fox guarding the hen house' as well as internal issues (which in some cases are because of corruption, and in other cases just poor execution)."
The researcher suggested that to help prevent abuse, "there should be a committee or other body to make determinations of whether certain contracts can legitimately be labeled as 'undisclosed.'"
"I would recommend the DOD reduce its contracting overall and return to providing more services in-house," Peltier added, referencing "services like weapons maintenance and security, but also things like food services and lodging, in order to have more command in fulfilling its own needs and reduce the use of contracts and the opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse."
In a statement Tuesday, Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project, put Peltier's findings about Pentagon contractor spending into a broader context.
"One hundred billion is an enormous amount of money, but it's also just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the full costs of the post-9/11 wars," Savell noted. "Nearly a million people have lost their lives in these wars and U.S. taxpayers have paid over $2.3 trillion for the war in Afghanistan alone--and over $8 trillion total for the post-9/11 wars in other places as well."
"It's shocking," she said, "that the U.S. government hasn't had a serious reckoning with the U.S. militarized counterterrorism model and its human and financial costs over the past two decades."
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Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two decades raked in nearly $108 billion--funds that "were distributed and spent with a significant lack of transparency," according to a report published Tuesday.
"These contracts show the shadowy 'camo economy' at work in Afghanistan."
"These contracts show the shadowy 'camo economy' at work in Afghanistan," said report author Heidi Peltier, director of programs for the Costs of War Project at Brown Univesity's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
"Military contracting obscures where and how taxpayer money flows, who profits, and how much is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse," she added. "It also makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed through military contracting."
Based on Peltier's review of public contracting databases--USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System--just over a dozen U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors got more than $44 billion, or about 41% of the almost $108 billion, from 2002 to this year.
As the document details:
In addition, thousands of smaller companies earned billions in contract spending, and about one-third of the contracts (in dollar terms) went to companies that are listed as "undisclosed" or "miscellaneous" in the data. These designations result from the contracts being given to foreign companies without a "DUNS" number, or they are undisclosed with national security or protection as a claimed rationale for secrecy. Whatever the reason, this creates an opacity that makes it impossible to know who exactly received U.S. taxpayer funds, what work was performed, how much profit was earned, and whether the intended purposes of the contracts were served.
Inadequate oversight, coupled with the issue of sub-contracting, results in a system in which the U.S. government pays contractors who then leave a trail of spending that is nearly impossible to follow.
"A number of companies performed services in Afghanistan under multiple different business names," the analysis notes. "A generous interpretation of this is that the businesses pursuing such practices were in fact performing different services. A less generous interpretation is that businesses can obscure how many contracts they are receiving as well as circumvent issues of ineligibility by operating under different names."
The report emphasizes that the almost $108 billion that Peltier focused on is "in addition to the trillions of dollars spent on DOD contracts performed in the U.S. over that period."
The contractors examined by Peltier were paid for construction, lodging, office supplies, refrigeration equipment, transportation, waste disposal, and weapons maintenance in the war-torn country. They operated various facilities--such as dining and troop housing--and were contracted for accounting, fuel, food, guard, and surveillance services.
During the nearly two-decade U.S. occupation, the analysis states, "contractors provided all types of goods and services that were essential to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, including services (such as weapons maintenance and fuel supply) that made the U.S. military dependent on and arguably vulnerable to the performance of contractors."
"Most contracts for work in Afghanistan ended or were rescinded by August 31, 2021, when U.S. troops fully withdrew," the report says. "Some contractor presence may remain, though it is difficult to know which companies and how many employees could still be working in service of the U.S. government in that country."
\u201cBreaking: Nearly one year after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, our latest report finds that $108 billion went to contractors working inside the country during the 20-year war. Over 1/3 of this total went to undisclosed recipients. [1/7] https://t.co/NT7hNTf3Fg\u201d— The Costs of War Project (@The Costs of War Project) 1660055042
Transparency is a major focus of the document, which highlights that "lack of oversight by the Department of Defense, combined with waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of both contractors and government employees, resulted in billions of misallocated and misspent taxpayer dollars."
The analysis cites reports by the DOD Inspector General (DODIG) and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In one case involving insufficient voucher reviews for a major contract from 2015 to 2017, the new report notes, "one-fifth of them had questionable or undocumented expenses, totaling over $536 million."
In another case, SIGAR found that "a subcontractor of Lockheed Martin submitted fraudulent invoices that resulted in overbilling the Department of Defense millions of dollars."
Peltier's report also points to government watchdogs' findings of "incomplete and shoddy construction of school buildings, warehouses, and other facilities" as well as "bribery of U.S. officials to secure contracts."
SIGAR, in its quarterly report to Congress this past January, "conservatively estimated nearly 30% of U.S. appropriations for Afghanistan reconstruction from 2009 to 2019 was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse." The Pentagon was responsible for the bulk of that spending.
The Brown analysis explains that "the overpayment of illegitimate expenses, and the lack of oversight of contracts by DOD was compounded by yet another problem: In some cases, contractors were hired to perform oversight of other contractors, in lieu of the oversight that should have been performed by DOD."
\u201cWhat\u2019s more, this figure is just a fraction of the over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending since the start of the war in Afghanistan in total, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors. [3/7] https://t.co/PcfqZ3arp0\u201d— The Costs of War Project (@The Costs of War Project) 1660055042
Peltier told Responsible Statecraft--which exclusively reported on the new document--that the DODIG "also found oversight by the DOD itself to be insufficient or poorly executed, so really the oversight problems are both 'the fox guarding the hen house' as well as internal issues (which in some cases are because of corruption, and in other cases just poor execution)."
The researcher suggested that to help prevent abuse, "there should be a committee or other body to make determinations of whether certain contracts can legitimately be labeled as 'undisclosed.'"
"I would recommend the DOD reduce its contracting overall and return to providing more services in-house," Peltier added, referencing "services like weapons maintenance and security, but also things like food services and lodging, in order to have more command in fulfilling its own needs and reduce the use of contracts and the opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse."
In a statement Tuesday, Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project, put Peltier's findings about Pentagon contractor spending into a broader context.
"One hundred billion is an enormous amount of money, but it's also just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the full costs of the post-9/11 wars," Savell noted. "Nearly a million people have lost their lives in these wars and U.S. taxpayers have paid over $2.3 trillion for the war in Afghanistan alone--and over $8 trillion total for the post-9/11 wars in other places as well."
"It's shocking," she said, "that the U.S. government hasn't had a serious reckoning with the U.S. militarized counterterrorism model and its human and financial costs over the past two decades."
Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two decades raked in nearly $108 billion--funds that "were distributed and spent with a significant lack of transparency," according to a report published Tuesday.
"These contracts show the shadowy 'camo economy' at work in Afghanistan."
"These contracts show the shadowy 'camo economy' at work in Afghanistan," said report author Heidi Peltier, director of programs for the Costs of War Project at Brown Univesity's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
"Military contracting obscures where and how taxpayer money flows, who profits, and how much is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse," she added. "It also makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed through military contracting."
Based on Peltier's review of public contracting databases--USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System--just over a dozen U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors got more than $44 billion, or about 41% of the almost $108 billion, from 2002 to this year.
As the document details:
In addition, thousands of smaller companies earned billions in contract spending, and about one-third of the contracts (in dollar terms) went to companies that are listed as "undisclosed" or "miscellaneous" in the data. These designations result from the contracts being given to foreign companies without a "DUNS" number, or they are undisclosed with national security or protection as a claimed rationale for secrecy. Whatever the reason, this creates an opacity that makes it impossible to know who exactly received U.S. taxpayer funds, what work was performed, how much profit was earned, and whether the intended purposes of the contracts were served.
Inadequate oversight, coupled with the issue of sub-contracting, results in a system in which the U.S. government pays contractors who then leave a trail of spending that is nearly impossible to follow.
"A number of companies performed services in Afghanistan under multiple different business names," the analysis notes. "A generous interpretation of this is that the businesses pursuing such practices were in fact performing different services. A less generous interpretation is that businesses can obscure how many contracts they are receiving as well as circumvent issues of ineligibility by operating under different names."
The report emphasizes that the almost $108 billion that Peltier focused on is "in addition to the trillions of dollars spent on DOD contracts performed in the U.S. over that period."
The contractors examined by Peltier were paid for construction, lodging, office supplies, refrigeration equipment, transportation, waste disposal, and weapons maintenance in the war-torn country. They operated various facilities--such as dining and troop housing--and were contracted for accounting, fuel, food, guard, and surveillance services.
During the nearly two-decade U.S. occupation, the analysis states, "contractors provided all types of goods and services that were essential to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, including services (such as weapons maintenance and fuel supply) that made the U.S. military dependent on and arguably vulnerable to the performance of contractors."
"Most contracts for work in Afghanistan ended or were rescinded by August 31, 2021, when U.S. troops fully withdrew," the report says. "Some contractor presence may remain, though it is difficult to know which companies and how many employees could still be working in service of the U.S. government in that country."
\u201cBreaking: Nearly one year after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, our latest report finds that $108 billion went to contractors working inside the country during the 20-year war. Over 1/3 of this total went to undisclosed recipients. [1/7] https://t.co/NT7hNTf3Fg\u201d— The Costs of War Project (@The Costs of War Project) 1660055042
Transparency is a major focus of the document, which highlights that "lack of oversight by the Department of Defense, combined with waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of both contractors and government employees, resulted in billions of misallocated and misspent taxpayer dollars."
The analysis cites reports by the DOD Inspector General (DODIG) and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In one case involving insufficient voucher reviews for a major contract from 2015 to 2017, the new report notes, "one-fifth of them had questionable or undocumented expenses, totaling over $536 million."
In another case, SIGAR found that "a subcontractor of Lockheed Martin submitted fraudulent invoices that resulted in overbilling the Department of Defense millions of dollars."
Peltier's report also points to government watchdogs' findings of "incomplete and shoddy construction of school buildings, warehouses, and other facilities" as well as "bribery of U.S. officials to secure contracts."
SIGAR, in its quarterly report to Congress this past January, "conservatively estimated nearly 30% of U.S. appropriations for Afghanistan reconstruction from 2009 to 2019 was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse." The Pentagon was responsible for the bulk of that spending.
The Brown analysis explains that "the overpayment of illegitimate expenses, and the lack of oversight of contracts by DOD was compounded by yet another problem: In some cases, contractors were hired to perform oversight of other contractors, in lieu of the oversight that should have been performed by DOD."
\u201cWhat\u2019s more, this figure is just a fraction of the over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending since the start of the war in Afghanistan in total, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors. [3/7] https://t.co/PcfqZ3arp0\u201d— The Costs of War Project (@The Costs of War Project) 1660055042
Peltier told Responsible Statecraft--which exclusively reported on the new document--that the DODIG "also found oversight by the DOD itself to be insufficient or poorly executed, so really the oversight problems are both 'the fox guarding the hen house' as well as internal issues (which in some cases are because of corruption, and in other cases just poor execution)."
The researcher suggested that to help prevent abuse, "there should be a committee or other body to make determinations of whether certain contracts can legitimately be labeled as 'undisclosed.'"
"I would recommend the DOD reduce its contracting overall and return to providing more services in-house," Peltier added, referencing "services like weapons maintenance and security, but also things like food services and lodging, in order to have more command in fulfilling its own needs and reduce the use of contracts and the opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse."
In a statement Tuesday, Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project, put Peltier's findings about Pentagon contractor spending into a broader context.
"One hundred billion is an enormous amount of money, but it's also just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the full costs of the post-9/11 wars," Savell noted. "Nearly a million people have lost their lives in these wars and U.S. taxpayers have paid over $2.3 trillion for the war in Afghanistan alone--and over $8 trillion total for the post-9/11 wars in other places as well."
"It's shocking," she said, "that the U.S. government hasn't had a serious reckoning with the U.S. militarized counterterrorism model and its human and financial costs over the past two decades."
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."