Another Lie: Medicare Costs

[subgenius]

Let me be the first to say it: Clinton did it too.
Let me also say: that don't make it right.

___________________

March 17 — Late one Friday afternoon in January, after the House of Representatives had adjourned for the week, Cybele Bjorklund, a House Democratic health policy aide, heard the buzz of the fax machine at her desk. Coming over the transom, with no hint of the sender, was a document she had been seeking for months: an estimate by Medicare's chief actuary showing the cost of prescription drug benefits for the elderly.

Dated June 11, 2003, the document put the cost at $551.5 billion over 10 years. It appeared to confirm what Ms. Bjorklund and her bosses on the House Ways and Means Committee had long suspected: the actuary, Richard S. Foster, had concluded the legislation would be far more expensive than Congress's $400 billion estimate — and had kept quiet while lawmakers voted on the bill and President Bush signed it into law.

Ms. Bjorklund had been pressing Mr. Foster for his numbers since June. When he refused, telling her he could be fired, she said, she confronted his boss, Thomas A. Scully, then the Medicare administrator. "If Rick Foster gives that to you," Ms. Bjorklund remembered Mr. Scully telling her, "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin." Mr. Scully denies making such threats.
................

But Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, who was also a negotiator, said on Wednesday that he did not learn of the higher estimates until January, when he attended a Republican leaders' retreat. An aide to Mr. DeLay said Joshua B. Bolten, President Bush's budget director, presented the $534 billion final figure at that meeting.

"The leaders about took his head off," said the aide, Stuart Roy, adding, "It was very clear that none of the leaders in that room had ever heard those numbers before."
.....
But Mr. Foster's figures do have significance. The Medicare bill was President Bush's highest legislative priority going into the election year, and Congressional forecasts about its cost were highly uncertain. At the same time, conservative lawmakers were up in arms over the expense, and were threatening to vote against the measure.

Ultimately, the legislation squeaked through the House by a final vote of 220 to 215, but only after Republican leaders kept the roll call open for nearly three hours while they twisted the arms of recalcitrant party members. Had the cost estimates been higher than the Congressional Budget Office figures, lawmakers of both parties say, it is possible the Republican-backed bill would have been doomed, or at least significantly altered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/politics/18MEDI.html

____________________

And what's interesting was that the lie was to influence conservative Republicans.
The White House is alienating a lot of their own party in Congress.

 

[subgenius]

The run-up to the Iraq war was more hype than lie. Medicare is a clearer example of dishonesty and corruption at high levels

The Medicare story is a clearer example of dishonesty and, yes, corruption at high levels. As former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill's statements make clear, the lying about budget numbers began early in the administration, when the White House falsely claimed that the government could not use the surplus to further draw down the debt. It continued after 9/11, when an assistant Treasury secretary complained that the administration was squandering the national consensus by insisting on tax-cut projections that weren't real. But the most shocking deception took place in the run-up to the signing of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit on Christmas Eve.

Recall how that bill squeaked through Congress only after some heads were cracked. A retiring Republican from Michigan, Rep. Nick Smith, even charges that supporters of the bill offered him a bribe in the form of financial support for the political campaign of his son. The bill was priced at the time at $400 billion over 10 years. After the deed was done (the specifics of which amounted to a huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical and health-care industries), it came out that the real cost will be at least $551.5 billion—a difference of $150-plus billion that will translate into trillions over time. Now we learn that the Bush administration knew the truth beforehand and squelched it. Rick Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, says he was told he would be fired if he passed along the higher estimates to Congress. "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin," Thomas Scully, then head of Medicare, said last June, according to an aide who has now gone public.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4571136/

 

[shanek]

The only thing amazing is that this actually surprises some people.

Harry Browne called it (yet again). When will people start listening?

 

[subgenius]

The only thing amazing is that this actually surprises some people.

Harry Browne called it (yet again). When will people start listening?

Doesn't seem like anybody cares, much less is surprised.
Is it just too complex to understand?

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

You know Sub that's the bad thing. In the post Watergate world apathy seems to rule and we tend to expect the worst from our politicians. They seem more then happy to accommodate us.

 

[crackmonkey]

So... if both parties engage in this kind of thing, what would be a solution? Having some kind of impartial auditor assess the fiscal impact of policies? Isn't that what the GAO does anyway?

 

[WildCat]

What I don't understand is why the Dems are making an issue about this. After all, their main complaint is that the bill doesn't go far enough!

Isn't it fair to say that the Dems would rather spend more on Medicare? And if it is, why the complaining?

Seems to me that the Republicans should be more upset over this than the Dems.

 

[shanek]

So... if both parties engage in this kind of thing, what would be a solution?

A third party principly dedicated to eliminating this kind of thing. A third party that realizes that government DOESN'T work, and this kind of thing will ALWAYS happen once you give government any kind of new power. With the Medicare issue, this is hardly the first time this has happened; it's been happening ever since the introduction of Medicare itself.

This isn't abuse of the system, or corruption of the system, or the system gone horribly awry; it's just the system and how it works. The only solution is to not give these people the power in the first place.

 

[subgenius]

What I don't understand is why the Dems are making an issue about this. After all, their main complaint is that the bill doesn't go far enough!

Isn't it fair to say that the Dems would rather spend more on Medicare? And if it is, why the complaining?

Seems to me that the Republicans should be more upset over this than the Dems.

Actually they are. The lies were to swing Republican votes.
Hastert has basically stopped talking to the advisors because he gets funny numbers all the time. I'll try to find a similar story about the numbers game on a highway bill that ticked him off big time.

 

[subgenius]

Gotta love that Google.

"Hastert said he wasn't receiving "straight numbers" on the highway bill from Bush's "people" and said, "I don't deal with his people anymore."

http://www.enr.com/news/transportation/archives/040315.asp

 

[subgenius]

The Republicans are p.o.'d about it:

Federal officials who misled Congress or pressured others to do so about the cost of the Medicare drug benefit should be fired, U.S. Rep. John Sullivan said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has called for an investigation into concerns that Medicare analyst Richard Foster believed Tom Scully, the former head of the Medicare agency, would have fired him if he shared his cost projections of the Medicare bill with members of Congress.

Sullivan and other lawmakers think they may have been deceived about the actual cost of the Medicare bill, which passed in 2003.
....
Sullivan said if the investigation shows wrongdoing it should lead to termination.

``I think they should be punished for that. I think it's wrong,'' the Tulsa Republican said. ``That person should be dismissed.''


http://www.kotv.com/main/home/stories.asp?whichpage=1&id=59560

The ends, once again, do not justify the means.

 

[toddjh]

A third party principly dedicated to eliminating this kind of thing.

Or not. It's easy to stick to your guns when elections are pretty much academic exercises. If the Libertarians were to become mainstream, you'd be hard-pressed to convince me they wouldn't become every bit as corrupt and irresponsible as the rest.

Democrats and Republicans aren't corrupt because that's inherent to the parties; they're corrupt because they're (at the moment) on top, and thus attract the opportunists and con men.

Jeremy

 

[shanek]

Or not. It's easy to stick to your guns when elections are pretty much academic exercises. If the Libertarians were to become mainstream, you'd be hard-pressed to convince me they wouldn't become every bit as corrupt and irresponsible as the rest.

It's possible, certainly. But at least with the Libertarians you have a chance, whereas with the Demopublicans you KNOW you're getting a corrupt and irresponsible government.

Democrats and Republicans aren't corrupt because that's inherent to the parties; they're corrupt because they're (at the moment) on top, and thus attract the opportunists and con men.

What you need to do is start examining the system that is in place; then you'll see that it is the system itself that is corrupt no matter who is in office. The solution is to dismantle that system and take these power away from government. As Michael Cloud said, "The problem is not the abuse of power, but the power to abuse."

 

[toddjh]

What you need to do is start examining the system that is in place; then you'll see that it is the system itself that is corrupt no matter who is in office. The solution is to dismantle that system and take these power away from government. As Michael Cloud said, "The problem is not the abuse of power, but the power to abuse." [/B]

Agreed. But I don't think the solution will be anything as simple as getting a new party into power. In fact, I don't know what the solution is. The problem is socially-based: it just doesn't occur to most people that politicians can be anything other than self-serving liars. That being the case, it will always be easy for self-serving liars to weasel their way into office, no matter what party they ostensibly belong to.

So, it will require a social solution. Those are notoriously slow and even more notoriously difficult to engineer. It may be that we have to wait until the lives of a large percentage of the population are obviously and unacceptably affected by the drain.

To put it another way: have you ever heard of a government becoming less bloated and top-heavy as time goes on? My experience is limited, but it always seems to end with the dissolution of the government itself, one way or another.

Jeremy

 

[subgenius]

Stop with the derail. There is a lesser of two evils. Always.

Bush's Medicare dream turning into a nightmare

http://www.freep.com/news/nw/medi22_20040322.htm

 

[subgenius]

When your only weapon is a hammer, the whole world is a nail.

 

[peptoabysmal]

A third party principly dedicated to eliminating this kind of thing. A third party that realizes that government DOESN'T work, and this kind of thing will ALWAYS happen once you give government any kind of new power. With the Medicare issue, this is hardly the first time this has happened; it's been happening ever since the introduction of Medicare itself.

This isn't abuse of the system, or corruption of the system, or the system gone horribly awry; it's just the system and how it works. The only solution is to not give these people the power in the first place.

I have a lot of respect for the Libertarian viewpoint. But; why, oh, why, do your candidates sound like they wear tin foil helmets to keep the satellites from reading their thoughts?

The United Nations HAS no authority over our national sovereignty, and I would demonstrate that to the world in a dramatic and unmistakable way. The day I enter the Oval Office, I will give notice to the United Nations. Member nations would have one week to evacuate their offices in the UN building in New York. They would have seven days to box up their computers, their paper work, and family photos. At noon on the eighth day, after ensuring that the building was empty, I would personally detonate the explosive charges that would reduce the building to rubble. The same type of rubble we had to clean up after September 11th. I want to send a message around the world that United States foreign policy had changed dramatically, and unmistakably.
Michael Badnarik

His idea for national security is to bring home all US troops immediately from everywhere and blow up the UN. His plan to restore Iraq after we blew the crap out of it? ... private voluntary charity.

 

[toddjh]

I have a lot of respect for the Libertarian viewpoint. But; why, oh, why, do your candidates sound like they wear tin foil helmets to keep the satellites from reading their thoughts?

The problem with third party candidates these days is that they shoot for the moon. Going for the U.S. presidency right away just makes them look completely naive and dumb. They should first focus exclusively on state legislatures and local offices, without even fielding a presidential candidate. Then, when they've made some progress there, run for governor and seats in Congress. Finally, if they enjoy wide support, then aim for the oval office. Slow and steady wins the race.

Jeremy

 

[shanek]

I have a lot of respect for the Libertarian viewpoint. But; why, oh, why, do your candidates sound like they wear tin foil helmets to keep the satellites from reading their thoughts?

I have no idea. Perhaps you could cite some quotes by, for example, Harry Browne (all sorts of material at www.harrybrowne.org) showing this?

Actually, our NC Senate candidate, Tom Bailey, has a great speech about why he's not paranoid of government anymore, and to show why he goes into detail about all the stuff he used to be paranoid about government doing have actually happened. It's a great speech.

His idea for national security is to bring home all US troops immediately from everywhere and blow up the UN. His plan to restore Iraq after we blew the crap out of it? ... private voluntary charity.

What's so crazy about stopping the international meddling that fosters anti-American sentiments, getting us out of a world organization that is siezing too much power for itself, and private voluntary charity?

That actually reminds me of a great campaign commercial Browne had. There's a closeup of the IRS sign outside their building, and the voiceover: "Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate for President, has big plans for the IRS building." Then it cuts to footage of a building being imploded. The best part was the last shot, showing a hunk of concrete with a piece of rebar sticking out, and a sign that reads, "For Sale: Genuine piece of the IRS building. Proceeds to pay off the National Debt."

Oh, one thing about Badnarik: He used to be a JFK conspiracy junkie. After a bunch of us pointed him to various pieces of evidence, wearing out all of his points, he finally concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman and was not part of a grander conspiracy. He changed his mind upon seeing the evidence, openly and without hesitation. That's class! How many candidates do you know that have done something like that?

 

[Evolver]

Oh, one thing about Badnarik: He used to be a JFK conspiracy junkie. After a bunch of us pointed him to various pieces of evidence, wearing out all of his points, he finally concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman and was not part of a grander conspiracy. He changed his mind upon seeing the evidence, openly and without hesitation. That's class! How many candidates do you know that have done something like that?

With Republicans and Democrats, that's called flip-flopping.