|
With $900 billion to
a $trillion dollars or more at stake, and everyone wanting three shares of
the health care pie (while giving up nothing), it should not come as a
surprise that 'Special interests'
play both sides in health fight
"We have the
American Nurses Association, we have the American Medical Association on
board," Obama told the weekend crowd in Grand Junction, Colo. "We have an agreement from drug companies to make prescription drugs more
affordable for seniors. ... The AARP supports this policy."
The drug makers went first in making a deal with the White House, agreeing to
pick up $80 billion in additional costs over the next decade to help defray
the expenses of the legislation. The American Hospital Association agreed to
shoulder an additional $155 billion.
In exchange, both won assurances the White House would protect them against
attempts in Congress to seek additional cuts in their projected Medicare and
Medicaid payments.
The American Medical Association's key issue was different. Doctors hope the
legislation will allow them to avoid a looming 21 percent cut in payments
under Medicare. The cost to the government for that would be about $230
billion over a decade.
Obama also agreed to require individuals to purchase insurance, reversing a
position he held during his campaign. "My thinking on the issue of
mandates has evolved. And I think that that is typical of most people who
study this problem deeper," he said.
Health Care
Sweeteners
It's easy to get buy-ins when you give away the farm. Obama brags about the
buy-ins but does not state the costs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers certainly
smell the gravy train as noted in Drugmakers Ramp
Advertising Campaign For Health Care Reform.
The more promotion there is for this package the more leery of it you
should be. The reason the AMA, AARP, and now PhRMA are all lining up behind
healthcare reform is because everyone of them has been bought out by
sweeteners.
Wile everyone is concerned about rationing, I am concerned about lack of
rationing. What incentives does anyone have to hold down costs?
Certainly big PhRMA has to be thinking more drugs will be prescribed or they
would not have a huge ad campaign going while pledging $80 billion in lower
drug costs. Here are two key questions: Is it really $80 billion? And what
did the Administration give up in return?
Huge Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma
In case you missed it, please read the Huffington Post article Internal Memo
Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma.
A memo obtained by
the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical
lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both
parties have been denying over the past week.
The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was
prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly
what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.
It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the
government's leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada -- and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare
Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced
reimbursements.
In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association
(PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior
citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: "Commitment of up to $80
billion, but not more than $80 billion."
..
Obama is walking a tightrope here. He wants to keep PhRMA from opposing the
bill, and benefits by having its support, which now includes a $150 million
advertising campaign. That's a fortune in politics -- more than Republican
presidential candidate John McCain spent on advertising during his entire
campaign -- but it's loose change in the pharmaceutical business.
What's The Real Deal?
"This memo isn't accurate and does not reflect the agreement with the
drug companies," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin.
If the health care deal as portrayed by the
Huffington Post is inaccurate, then why doesn't the administration tell us
what the real deal is? This is a big credibility issue. Obama is involved in
a mudfight and one of the reasons is he refuses to say what is in the health
care bill or should be in the bill. Instead all he does is bitch about
misconceptions while working out secret backroom deals that he will not
disclose.
Citizens want to know "What's the real deal?' It's a good question, and
one that deserves truthful answers. Instead, the administration responds by
slinging more mud.
This was a very damning leak printed by the Huffington post.
Scope For Fraud Increases
The more money you throw at a problem, the bigger the scope for fraud. $900
billion is a lot of scope for fraud. Consider Medicaid. The New York Times
reports New York Medicaid
Fraud May Reach Into Billions.
It was created 40
years ago to provide health care for the poorest New Yorkers, offering a
lifeline to those who could not afford to have a baby or a heart attack. But
in the decades since, New York State's Medicaid program has also become a
$44.5 billion target for the unscrupulous and the opportunistic.
School officials around the state have enrolled tens of thousands of
low-income students in speech therapy without the required evaluation,
garnering more than $1 billion in questionable Medicaid payments for their
districts. One Buffalo school official sent 4,434 students into speech
therapy in a single day without talking to them or reviewing their records,
according to federal investigators.
New York's Medicaid program, once a beacon of the Great Society era, has
become so huge, so complex and so lightly policed that it is easily
exploited. A computer analysis of several million records obtained under the
state Freedom of Information Law revealed numerous indications of fraud and
abuse that the state had never looked into.
"It's like a honey pot," said John M. Meekins, a former senior
Medicaid fraud prosecutor in Albany who said he grew increasingly
disillusioned before he retired in 2003. "It truly is. That is what they
use it for."
New York's Medicaid program is by far the most expensive and most generous
in the nation. It spends far more - now $44.5 billion annually - than that of
any other state, even California, whose Medicaid program covers about 55
percent more people. New York's Medicaid budget is larger than most states'
entire budgets, and it spends nearly twice the national average - roughly
$10,600, more than any other state - on each of its 4.2 million recipients,
one in every five New Yorkers.
That generosity was born of good intentions when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller
signed the program into law in 1966, following the state's tradition of
creating big antipoverty programs. But Medicaid has become far more than the
child of that altruism, having morphed into an economic engine that fuels one
of the state's biggest industries, leaving fraud and unnecessary spending to
grow in its wake.
The New York Times article is a
stunning 8 pages long filled with example after example of fraud.
Did it occur to anyone that we need to cleanup existing fraud before working
out secret backroom deals and throwing another $900 billion into the honey
pot? I guess not.
Mish
GlobalEconomicAnalysis.blogspot.com
| |