Fact-esque

Why Do We Have a Deficit? Because the Rich Don't Pay Taxes

The deficit hysteria is mounting over at Pete Peterson's Kill Medicare & SocSec Shoppe, and Bill Clinton's pal Erskine Bowles wants you to know that even though the commission he co-chairs with MediSocSec hater Alan Simpson is supposed to find some answers, it's just too complicated and they probably won't.

Asked about the prospect of a deadlock, Bowles, sounding reconciled to it already, declared "that won't be victory, but we will have made real progress."

The progress, Bowles said, will come in having educated the American people about the dangers of the deficit. And that, judging from the co-chairs' rhetoric, will involve scaring the heck out of people.

If the federal budget remains on autopilot, "everything you deeply love," Simpson said, muttering something about the "the children and the poor" is "not gonna be there."

Bowles warned that the United States could face actual bankruptcy.

Golly. That's sounds awful. Let's see if we can help them out, shall we?

Focus of Debt Commission is Reducing Medicare and Social Security

We predicted some time ago that, looking at the makeup of Obama's so-called Debt Commission and bearing in mind recent statements that "everybody was going to have to make sacrifices" (except the bankers, corporate executives, and coupon-clippers, of course, though he left that part out), it was going to turn out that, golly whiz, the biggest part of the national debt had been created not by the war he won't stop or the massive bail-outs of the rich that he engineered Bush-fashion but by those damn old people driving Lexuses. So sayeth Debt Commission Chair Alan Simpson.

Bernanke Fires Latest Shot in the War Against Social Security

The signs have been around for quite a while that Corporate America, Wall Street, and the Investor Class were all going to work together to use the massive Bush deficit as an excuse to cut back and then kill Social Security. Recently Pres Obama joined the killers by first making one of his "we all have to make sacrifices" (except bankers and corporations) speeches about the need to cut "entitlements", then by making a speech identifying the right-wing's mythical GIANT MEDICARE FRAUD! scare tactic as a real threat and promising to spend resources to fight it, and finally by putting together a Presidential Commission on Social Security and naming four well-known anti-SocSec evangelistas to the panel to make recommendations.

Yesterday Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, speaking in banker-friendly Texas, publicly allowed as how the deficit requires the govt to cut back SocSec.

They Both Reached for the Gun

Politico does its level best to keep the latest crazy zombie health care lie alive.   Here are the facts:

Myth vs. Fact: Advance Planning Consultations in H.R. 3200

 
Few areas are more vital for honest discussion and careful consideration than end-of-life care for America’s seniors.  Unfortunately, families often do not know their loved ones’ preferences for end of life care and are not confronted with these difficult decisions until an emergency arises. This leaves spouses, sons, daughters and grandchildren unprepared; as a result families struggle to make decisions in the midst of turmoil. 

The House health care legislation includes a provision (Sec. 1233) that provides seniors with better care as they grapple with these hard questions. This provision extends Medicare coverage to cover the cost of patients voluntarily speaking with their doctors about their values and preferences regarding end-of-life care. These are deeply personal decisions that take thoughtful consideration, and it is only appropriate that doctors be compensated for their time. 

 Myths and Facts about this provision 
 
Myth: Patients will be forced to have this consultation once every five years.

• Fact: Advance planning consultations are not mandatory; this benefit is completely voluntary.  The provision merely provides coverage under Medicare to have a conversation once every five years if – and only if – a patient wants to make his or her wishes known to a doctor. If desired, patients may have consultations more frequently if they are chronically ill or if their health status changes.

Myth: Patients will be forced to sign an advance care directive (or living will).

• Fact: Patients will never be forced to sign a living will; there is no mandate in the bill to complete an advance care directive. If a patient chooses to complete an advance directive or order for life sustaining treatment, these documents will help articulate a full range of treatment preferences, from full and aggressive treatment to limited, comfort care only.  Patients can customize these written documents so that their values are fully reflected, helping family members understand a loved one’s wishes so they can be respected.

Myth: Patients will have to see a health care professional chosen by the government.

• Fact: The government will not choose the doctor; physician choice is entirely up to the patient.  The legislation simply has Medicare pay for the consultation if the patient wishes to talk with his or her doctor about their preferences and values.  

Bush III: Obama's Personal Anti-Abortion Advocate & God-Friendly Scientist

I hate to say the same things over and over again but I often don't have much choice: Obama isn't all that different from Bush and it isn't just civil rights or his obeisance to Wall Street. Sarah Posner writes in The Nation that he has just appointed Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), to lead the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Kelley isn't exactly a wingnut but she is anti-abortion in a job that requires her to be objective at the very least. (Via T2A)

Obama Has Faith Tinkerbell Will Get Better If We All Clap Hard Enough

Yesterday I wrote about the carefully-couched offer of the major health insurance industry reps to cut 1.5% of their costs. I suggested that it was hooey. President Obama, however, got up in front of cameras at almost the same moment I was dismissing their lies empty promises "proposal" and told the world their proposal was the key to health reform in the US, or words to that effect. Even for WaPo Beltway stenographer Ceci Connelly, this was a bit much.

In his quest to transform American health care, President Obama appeared yesterday to put his faith in pledges from some of the interest groups that helped scuttle reform 15 years ago, but the industry's promises fell well short of the White House's expansive claims.

Ther chance that anything these convicted liars say may actually happen are lower than the chance that your pet goldfish will write a best-selling novel but that hasn't stopped Obama from assuming it. He has "faith" - always a dangerous strategy with hungry sharks.

What this actually seems to be is a concerted effort to convince everyone that the usual Kabuki actually has some substance this time, but of course it doesn't so all they've managed to do is put a sizable chunk of their credibility on a horse and send it galloping into the sunset. Which could be a good thing.

Same Old Song

David Waldman has a very useful blast from the GOP's lunatic past for you:

I have with me a hard copy of a collection of Republican quotes predicting doom and disaster in the wake of the 1993 Clinton economic stimulus plan, and much of the rhetoric is eerily similar to today's. Of course, that should come as no surprise, since the point of the compilation was in fact to point out that the 1993 rhetoric -- particularly on health care, which was still a live proposition at that time -- was itself eerily similar to Republican doom and disaster rhetoric during the debate on the original Social Security and Medicare legislation.

I figure this is what I've been saving this crazy thing for, after all these years. So I'm just going to type them all up here for your enjoyment. And I sincerely hope that they retain their entertainment value forever, and in particular that we all get to laugh -- not nervous tittering, but really have a carefree laugh -- at this exercise very, very soon.

Please take the time to read them all, if not all at once.  And bookmark that page.  You will want to have quick access to it during the imminent battle the insurance industry will wage openly to save itself from regulation and to preserve/extend the pipeline that channels our money into their bank accounts.

My favorite quote is in opposition to Medicare:

Raymond E. King, Jr., National Association of Life Underwriters, 5/65:

[The Medicare bill would] set up a health care program which served little or no necessary social purpose and which would be a direct, unwarranted and completely unfair intrusion in private enterprise.

Get ready to beat back nonsense like that and much worse in the months ahead.

Hospitals Use Homeless in Medicare Scam

"They should die and decrease the surplus population."

Ever since the right-wing began to insist that medical care was a business, and one that could make a HUGE profit if liberal busybodies would just stop talking foolishly about hyping "non-profit" insurance plans, HMO's - as we all know - have moved from patient-care centers to profit-care centers. Except that with insurance companies dumping millions of people for "pre-existing conditions", raising their rates so high that over 40 million of us have no insurance at all, and employers dumping insurance coverage as a bennie for millions more, the hospitals owned by investors who expected to make tons of easy money have instead had difficulty keeping their doors open.

In LA, land of the conscienceless scam (Hollywood thrives on them), three hospitals appear to have been caught doping out a solution to the medical profit problem.

On a Sunday afternoon two years ago, five homeless people being dropped off on Los Angeles' skid row by an ambulance caught the attention of police officers.

The officers videotaped what they thought was a case of hospitals dumping patients in a section of the city where few would notice or care.

But as investigators began to unravel the incident, they say they found something far different: a massive scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars by recruiting homeless patients for unnecessary medical services.

The elaborate enterprise churned thousands of indigents through hospitals over the last four years and billed Medicare and Medi-Cal for costly and unjustified medical procedures, federal, state and local investigators said Wednesday.

(emphasis added)

It's hard not to relate the topsy-turvy, Bizarro reverse-reality of a hospital using and abusing indigent patients to make a $ rather than helping them - the opposite of what we used to know was their role, what they used to see as their role before conservative greed spread even to caregivers, directly to the leadership of the Bush/Cheney ideologues and the neoconservative mantra we've been hearing for so long: "Poor=Lazy, Poor=Worthless".

Happy Birthday Medicare!

Medicare is 43 years old today. It isn't easy to find mention of that happy fact in the corporate media but there are some celebrations happening hither and yon.  The AFL-CIO blog notes that the Alliance for Retired Americans has organized cake deliveries to members of Congress as well as press conferences and rallies in at least five states.   It looks like PA State Senator James Ferlo joined forces with the Teamsters to host an in-district party at noon today.   Healthcare-Now, a single-payer fan, has organized parties around the country.   And there is a terrific article in the Jasper Newsboy, (from Jasper, Texas, home of Traudney Byerly) that warns seniors against losing what Medicare was set up to do:

In an Overwheming Defeat BushCo Medicare Veto Overidden After Republican Filibuster Broken

That's the sort of headline I wanted to see today.  Instead we got stories like this one from the pro-war WaPo.  You only need to read the mindless regurgitation of BushCo's  baseless position on the Medicare Advantage boondoggle, which suffered a small setback in this bill, to know that you should be looking elsewhere for information:

Bush said the cuts to insurers would harm the managed-care program, which his administration sees as giving seniors more choices and eventually leading to lower health costs for the federal government.

I see eating two cups a day of Edy's Grand Ice Cream as giving me all the calcium I'll ever need and eventually leading to lower body mass and toned abs.  See the problem?

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a good statement on the veto.  From it:

Under the bill, overall enrollment in Medicare Advantage (the program through which Medicare beneficiaries  can elect to receive coverage through private insurance companies instead of regular Medicare) would still climb by 25 percent over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Also, enrollment in private fee-for-service plans within Medicare Advantage would still be expected to  increase by 39 percent by 2013 — even though it costs the federal government 17 percent more to cover a   beneficiary under private fee-for-service plans than under       regular Medicare, on average, according to Congress's expert  Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.                  

The bill would, however, require private fee-for-service plans to establish adequate provider networks and collect data on the quality of health care they provide, as other Medicare Advantage plans already must do.  By making them compete on a more equal basis with other private plans, the bill would slow their explosive and thus costly                   enrollment growth.  This, in turn, would produce part of the savings that offset the bill’s overall cost, while improving access to care among beneficiaries enrolled in these              plans.                  

There's an easy way to produce $157B in savings over ten years: end Medicare Advantage overpayments completely.  But, you know, babysteps.   Plus BushCo had his butt handed to him.  So it was a good day.