Medicare and Medicaid At 50: One Is Going Bankrupt, the Other Is Bankrupting States

When President Johnson signed Medicare into law on June 30, 1965, he said , "If it has a few defects, I am confident those can be quickly remedied."
Fifty years later, a Government Accountability Office report found that an eye-popping $60 billion — fully 10% of Medicare's budget — was lost to waste, fraud, abuse or improper payments last year. Among the glaring defects, the GAO found 23,400 fake or bad addresses on Medicare's list of providers.


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Ahead of Senate vote, Ted Cruz & Co. stand athwart bipartisan ‘doc fix’

The Senate is set to take up a bipartisan bill Tuesday that will permanently end the Medicare "doc fix," a yearly legislative headache on Capitol Hill, but some of the Senate's most conservative members are threatening to oppose the legislation crafted last month in the House, citing its price tag.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he expected to bring the bill to the Senate floor later in the day, hours before Medicaid officials say they will implement a 21 percent cut to the rates it pays doctors treating Medicare patients. McConnell said there is "a bipartisan desire" to pass the bill before the midnight deadline.


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Senate Dems threaten to oppose deal on Medicare doc fees

Democratic senators would oppose a potential House bipartisan deal preventing cuts in physicians’ Medicare payments if it doesn’t finance a children’s health program for four years, senior Senate Democratic aides said Sunday.

The aides issued the threat as House bargainers try preventing a 21 percent reduction in doctors' Medicare reimbursements scheduled for April 1.

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Obama administration clears way for taxpayer-funded sex-change surgery

The taxpayer-funded agency in question is Medicare, so if you have a grandma or grandpa who’s itching to endure complex surgery and hormone therapy to rid themselves of a gender they’ve already lived with for 65 years or more, good news. Help is on the way.  Sort of.  The Department of Health and Human Services’ Departmental Appeals Board, an internal review structure within the byzantine federal agency, issued a ruling that ended a ban on Medicare even considering covering sex reassignment surgery and related care because a fear of “serious complications” resulting from the “experimental” surgery.

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Healthcare cuts canceled after Dem complaints

The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.  The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.  Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.

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John Kerry's ObamaCare Boondoggle

Enter Mr. Kerry, who slipped an opaque provision into the Obama health law to require that Medicare wage reimbursements now come from a national pool of money, rather than state allocations. The Kerry kickback didn't get much notice, since it was cloaked in technicality and never specifically mentioned Massachusetts. But the senator knew exactly what he was doing. You see, "rural" hospitals in Massachusetts are a class all their own. The Bay State has only one, a tiny facility on the tony playground of the superrich—Nantucket. Nantucket College Hospital's relatively high wages set the floor for what all 81 of the state's urban hospitals must also be paid. And since these dramatically inflated Massachusetts wages are now getting sucked out of a national pool, there's little left for the rest of America. Clever Mr. Kerry.

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Cover Oregon Gets Federal Nod for Health Insurance Exchange

Yesterday the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) gave Oregon conditional approval for its plan to operate a health insurance exchange – called Cover Oregon – which will help connect thousands of Oregonians to health coverage. Oregon was among the first six states in the nation to receive conditional approval of its “blueprint” application. Read more at Cascade Business News... Read More......

Heritage/Morning Bell: How Obamacare Robs Medicare and Hurts Seniors

The rhetorical Medicare wars have heated up this week, after President Obama declared in his Saturday radio address that his proposed reforms "won't touch your guaranteed Medicare benefits. Not by a single dime." ✧ This is incorrect. Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and uses these "savings" from Medicare to fund other entitlement expansions mandated by Obamacare. Medicare becomes a cash cow for Obamacare, and the Medicare "savings" from payment cuts are not put back into making Medicare solvent. Such massive payment cuts do impact Medicare benefits, as well as seniors' access to those benefits. Read more at Heritage/Morning Bell... Read More......

TA: Why Hasn't Anyone Signed Up For the High-Risk Health Insurance Pools?

THE ATLANTIC, 6/2/2011 by Megan McArdle - "I've predicted that lots of parts of Obamacare will not work the way they're expected to. But here's one I wouldn't have predicted: the high-risk pools, which were meant to tide people over until 2013, have signed up just 18,000 people as of March. ∴ There were supposed to be millions of people who were uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions. We heard lengthy testimony about their terrible plight. I don't think it's too strong to say that this fear--that you could get sick and no one would insure you, that's right, you, Mr. & Mrs. Middle-Class Voter--was one of the main reasons offered for the health care overhaul. It was estimated by Medicare's Chief Actuary that around 400,000 would sign up (the CBO estimated 200,000, but only because they assumed that HHS would use its authority to limit enrollment in order to stay within the $5 billion budgeted for the program). So where are all the uninsurable people?" Read more at The Atlantic...

Maybe the health care crisis was invented. Read Pattern of Corruption: Robert Creamer's Blueprint Read More......

DeFazio Switches 'Yes' Vote to 'No' on Health Care Bill (unless...)

UPDATE: DeFazio voted "Yes."

FOXNews.com, 3/19/2010 - The vote tally on health care reform is starting to look like the Dow. ∴ Just when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to be one vote shy of the 216 she needs for health care reform to pass, a Democrat [DeFazio] who voted for the bill last year says he's switching his vote to no. ∴ [...] But he indicated he could still change his mind again.

"I'm a no unless they fix this," he said, referring to what he sees as insufficient Medicare spending in rural areas."

Read more at FOX...

Note: Rep. Boccieri (D-OH) switched his vote from no to yes. Try to keep up with the health care vote switching at National Journal's Hotline On Call. Read More......

WSJ: Obama Targets Medicare Advantage

WALL STREET JOURNAL/OPINION, 8/26/2009 by Karl Rove - President Barack Obama was wise to vacation this week on Martha's Vineyard. Not because it's one of the few places in America where his health-care plan is still popular, but because by getting out of Washington he gave staff time to repair his vaunted message machine, which was starting to break down.

(Excerpt) Medicare Advantage also has built-in incentives to encourage insurers to offer lower costs and better benefits. It's a program that puts patients in charge, not the government, which is why seniors like it and probably why the administration hates it.

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Change We Can't Believe In?

WASHINGTON POST, 8/12/2009 by Ruth Marcus - Candidate Barack Obama offered a lofty vision of how his White House would operate. When the details of health reform were being hammered out, he vowed, "We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." ∴ The campaign even aired an ad singling out Billy Tauzin, the drug industry's chief lobbyist. "The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies," Obama said in the ad. "And you know what? The chairman of the committee, who pushed the law through, went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that." ∴ Now, it turns out, the Obama White House has cut a backroom -- actually, Roosevelt Room -- deal with Tauzin: Drugmakers would ante up $80 billion in savings in return for a promise that Medicare wouldn't be allowed to negotiate drug prices. Read more at the Washington Post...

Hat tip: John H. Detweiler
John writes, "Change?" Read More......

Championing the Status Quo

WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2009 by Robert J. Samuelson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - "The status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government." -- President Obama, June 13

One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

AARP Takes Seniors’ Money But Turns Back on Their Questions

Obama’s Health Plan would end Medicare for Seniors: CANADA FREE PRESS (CFP), 8/9/2009 by Jerry McConnell - AARP Takes Seniors’ Money But Turns Back on Their Questions

AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION (AFA), 8/7/2009 - Senior citizens who went to a meeting sponsored by AARP were left to themselves after the AARP hostess walked out. The seniors were trying to get answers concerning ObamaCare and why AARP would support a government controlled health system that many believe would lead to euthanasia and rationing of health care.Watch the video. Read More......

Bush's Achievements: Ten Things The President Got Right

The Weekly Standard
By Fred Barnes

The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America's position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened. That is twaddle. Conservatives - okay, not all of them - have only been a little bit kinder. They give Bush credit for the surge that saved Iraq, but not for much else.

He deserves better. His presidency was far more successful than not. And there's an aspect of his decision-making that merits special recognition: his courage. Time and time again, Bush did what other presidents, even Ronald Reagan, would not have done and for which he was vilified and abused. That -defiantly doing the right thing - is what distinguished his presidency.

Bush had ten great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House, starting with his decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans. The treaty was a disaster, with India and China exempted and economic decline the certain result. Everyone knew it. But only Bush said so and acted accordingly.

He stood athwart mounting global warming hysteria and yelled, "Stop!" He slowed the movement toward a policy blunder of worldwide impact, providing time for facts to catch up with the dubious claims of alarmists. Thanks in part to Bush, the supposed consensus of scientists on global warming has now collapsed. The skeptics, who point to global cooling over the past decade, are now heard loud and clear. And a rational approach to the theory of manmade global warming is possible.

Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We'll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, "Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack."

Crucial intelligence was obtained from captured al Qaeda leaders, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with the help of waterboarding. Whether this tactic - it creates a drowning sensation - is torture is a matter of debate. John McCain and many Democrats say it is. Bush and Vice President Cheney insist it isn't. In any case, it was necessary. Lincoln once made a similar point in defending his suspension of habeas corpus in direct defiance of Chief Justice Roger Taney. "Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" Lincoln asked. Bush understood the answer in wartime had to be no.

Bush's third achievement was the rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton. He didn't hesitate to conduct wireless surveillance of terrorists without getting a federal judge's okay. He decided on his own how to treat terrorists and where they should be imprisoned. Those were legitimate decisions for which the president, as commander in chief, should feel no need to apologize.

Defending, all the way to the Supreme Court, Cheney's refusal to disclose to Congress the names of people he'd consulted on energy policy was also enormously important. Democratic congressman Henry Waxman demanded the names, but the Court upheld Cheney, 7-2. Last week, Cheney defended his refusal, waspishly noting that Waxman "doesn't call me up and tell me who he's meeting with."

Achievement number four was Bush's unswerving support for Israel. Reagan was once deemed Israel's best friend in the White House. Now Bush can claim the title. He ostracized Yasser Arafat as an impediment to peace in the Middle East. This infuriated the anti-Israel forces in Europe, the Third World, and the United Nations, and was criticized by champions of the "peace process" here at home. Bush was right.

He was clever in his support. Bush announced that Ariel Sharon should withdraw the tanks he'd sent into the West Bank in 2002, then exerted zero pressure on Sharon to do so. And he backed the wall along Israel's eastern border without endorsing it as an official boundary, while knowing full well that it might eventually become exactly that. He was a loyal friend.

His fifth success was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education reform bill cosponsored by America's most prominent liberal Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. The teachers' unions, school boards, the education establishment, conservatives adamant about local control of schools - they all loathed the measure and still do. It requires two things they ardently oppose, mandatory testing and accountability.

Kennedy later turned against NCLB, saying Bush is shortchanging the program. In truth, federal education spending is at record levels. Another complaint is that it forces teachers to "teach to the test." The tests are on math and reading. They are tests worth teaching to.

Sixth, Bush declared in his second inaugural address in 2005 that American foreign policy (at least his) would henceforth focus on promoting democracy around the world. This put him squarely in the Reagan camp, but he was lambasted as unrealistic, impractical, and a tool of wily neoconservatives. The new policy gave Bush credibility in pressing for democracy in the former Soviet republics and Middle East and in zinging various dictators and kleptocrats. It will do the same for President Obama, if he's wise enough to hang onto it.

The seventh achievement is the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It's not only wildly popular; it has cost less than expected by triggering competition among drug companies. Conservatives have deep reservations about the program. But they shouldn't have been surprised. Bush advocated the drug benefit in the 2000 campaign. And if he hadn't acted, Democrats would have, with a much less attractive result.

Then there were John Roberts and Sam Alito. In putting them on the Supreme Court and naming Roberts chief justice, Bush achieved what had eluded Richard Nixon, Reagan, and his own father. Roberts and Alito made the Court indisputably more conservative. And the good news is Roberts, 53, and Alito, 58, should be justices for decades to come.

Bush's ninth achievement has been widely ignored. He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China. On top of that, he forged strong ties with India. An important factor was their common enemy, Islamic jihadists. After 9/11, Bush made the most of this, and Indian leaders were receptive. His state dinner for Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 was a lovefest.

Finally, a no-brainer: the surge. Bush prompted nearly unanimous disapproval in January 2007 when he announced he was sending more troops to Iraq and adopting a new counterinsurgency strategy. His opponents initially included the State Department, the Pentagon, most of Congress, the media, the foreign policy establishment, indeed the whole world. This makes his decision a profile in courage. Best of all, the surge worked. Iraq is now a fragile but functioning democracy.

How does Bush rank as a president? We won't know until he's judged from the perspective of two or three decades. Hindsight forced a sharp upgrading of the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. Given his achievement, it may have the same effect for Bush.
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NFRW Political Briefing, The Week of January 12, 2008
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov Read More......