Weapons of Medicare Destruction

[Sticky]

UNFORTUNATELY, we keep finding new WMD -- Weapons of Medicare Destruction.

http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1511~2032475,00.html

Instead of being buried in underground caves and hidden in sequestered mines, they lie on the pages of government documents and policies. Their wayward aim goes to the heart of Medicare and the people it serves.

Sociopolitical events within the last year provide worrisome evidence confirming the existence of stockpiles of WMD. Most recently, the chief actuary of the Medicare program, Richard S. Foster, claimed that he was instructed to withhold his forecast of a significantly higher cost for the new Medicare drug bill prior to its passage.

According to reports in the New York Times, Foster said that Thomas A. Scully, the administrator of the program, threatened him with dismissal if he provided Congress with the higher price tag -- a $500 to $600 billion cost over the first 10 years. Foster's higher estimate was later conceded by the Bush administration, but only after the drug bill had passed, based on a premised cost of "just" $400 billion. Several Republican and Democrat lawmakers who voted for the bill have subsequently declared that they would not have supported it had they known the truth.

I hope that a legitimate investigation will look into the allegations made by Foster. I also hope that unethical behaviors reflecting potential conflicts-of-interest will not be exempted from scrutiny by the issuance of waivers.

And yet, even if such an investigation were possible, regardless of its outcome we are left with a destructive drug bill and reason to doubt the administration that engineered it.

[sadiesworld]

1. The Medicare drug bill is a template for the puke approach to policy:

Make sure it is filled with corporate goodies, present it as reform when it is actually designed to destroy the program, lie about the cost, use bribes to get it passed, co-opt a previously respected group (AARP) to help you, and then put out misleading, tax-payer-funded ads in order to sell it.