On November 14th, I published an article here concerning exemptions from this years health care reform legislation granted to various organizations. One of the groups featured from that list of applicants was identified as New England Health Care, which we linked to at their site which identified the full name as “New England Health Care Institute.”

Hot Air has since been contacted by a representative of NEHCI in a message which included the following statement:

The New England Healthcare Institute did not apply for nor receive the waiver and we do not fit the profile of the company on HHS’s website. We have less than two dozen enrollees as opposed to the more than 7,400 covered by the entity in question. So the claims you’ve made against our organization are inaccurate and untrue. The Department of Health and Human Services has clarified the organization’s full name and you’ll see they’ve updated the list today: It was the New England Health Care Employees Welfare Fund that received the waiver.

First, my apologies to New England Healthcare for the incorrect reference. As you will see, the list of waiver applicants has indeed now been revised to provide a longer name for the applicant in question, listed as, “New England Health Care Employees Welfare Fund.” (NEHCEWF)

A search for an exact match on that name produced conflicting results, but we did locate a listing for the “New England Health Care Employees Welfare & Pension Fund” who I contacted. The link for their web site redirects to the URL http://nehceu.org/ which certainly appears to be the proper acronym, but their web page displays a title of SEIU Healthcare 1199NE. Their mailing address is listed as 77 Huyshope Ave. in Hartford, Connecticut.

Upon calling the phone number listed for the organization, a woman answered the phone saying, “SEIU 1199” and then informed me that this was not, in fact, the NEHCEWF but she could provide me with the number, and did so. Upon calling that number I was informed that I had indeed reached the NEHCEWF, and that their address was also 77 Huyshope Ave. in Hartford, Connecticut.

My final inquiry was to confirm whether or not they had received an exemption from the recent federal health care regulations and were the same entity listed on the HHS web site. Neither person I spoke to was able to answer that question, and the message I left on their manager’s voice mail has not been returned at the time of this writing.