Can We Call Medicare a “Boondoggle” Yet?
by matt at 7:00 am on June 8th, 2004 in
Bush Man Date,
Corruption
The answer is yes, Medicare is a boondoggle. You can really stop reading now. I promise.
Boondoggle: A government-funded project with no purpose other than political patronage.
We already know that:
The administration lied about the cost of the prescription drug benefit to the tune of $140 Billion.
The Congressional Republican leadership twisted arms and even bribed members of Congress to vote for the bill.
The official in charge of calculating the cost of the plan was told that he would be fired if he revealed the plan’s true cost.
The administration is spending $80 million plus to advertise the plan, with ads placed by the President’s campaign media buyer (a potential $12 Million payday for the buy.)
But all of that is old news. Next verse same as the first.
Now the Center for American Progress finds:
The 73 health care companies approved to administer the Medicare drug discount card programs gave President Bush and conservatives in Congress a total of more than $5 million in hard money, soft money, and PAC contributions.
Twenty health care companies approved by the Bush administration to administer the Medicare drug discount cards have been involved in fraud charges, with many being forced to pay fines to federal and local governments because of their behavior.
The 20 companies involved in fraud charges represent less than a third of all the approved companies. Yet, they made more than 60% ($3.1 million) of the total campaign contributions from approved drug card companies to President Bush and conservatives in Congress.
In addition:
The House leadership controls the C-SPAN cameras in the chamber. Normally, during a vote, the camera constantly pans side to side monitoring floor activity. But during the three hours the conservative leadership was harassing members to switch their votes, the camera was locked on the Democratic side of the chamber. As a result “there is no visual record of who was talking to whom that night while votes were sought by the leadership.”
In December 2003, just after the president signed the Medicare bill, chief Medicare administrator Tom Scully joined a law firm that represents drug manufacturers and other major players in the health care industry who benefited from the law. The Bush administration granted Scully an ethics waiver “so that he could negotiate with potential employers while he helped write the Medicare law.”
Seems the only saving grace in this plan might be if it actually benefitted the senior citizens who need it the most. You didn’t think it actually would benefit them did you?
What better way to help old people than a dizzying array of cards to choose from, a constantly busy hotline with often contradictory answers, and rules that bind them to the plan they pick but allow the providers to change the rules or drop coverage at any time?
If the Medicare prescription drug plan was a building, it would be a crackhouse. On fire. Caving in on itself due to its own weight. And built on the Indian burial ground where the Poltergeist house used to be.
As you can no doubt tell, the Medicare fiasco is the quintessential example of how this administration (mis)governs: Put a happy face on a program that will harm the people who it is supposed to help while diverting money to big money campaign donors who just happen to be the same people who have been ripping the country off for decades.
What’s worse in this case is that it’s senior citizens who are expected to negotiate endless amounts of red tape only to end up not much better off than where they started so that Big Pharma can add to their bottom line. Another triumph of Corporatism over Capitalism.
Or it would look like this: (courtesy of Hoeffel for Senate:)
(click to enlarge)
jean-paul wrote:
i hate when people post coments like this on my site, but seriously, that little c-span nugget was a good thing to read. and i thusly learned something! bonus points.
Posted 08 Jun 2004 at 12:14 pm ¶