Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed

reply to post by Aim64C


These are all fine points, but again, it wasn't the major motivation for the post. I am really not at all interested in talking about "red state" vs "blue state". My problem was the lies and misinformation being spread, and then the same people would turn around and use these lies in part to justify cutting programs like Medicare and Education.

reply to post by meeneecat


Well, there's your problem.

It isn't about which political ideology works and which political ideology doesn't. I know quite a few trailer-trash hicks that live off of welfare who will also give you a long lecture on standing on your own two feet. I also drive through a number of locations in the city where people do little but traffic drugs, live on welfare, and/or shoot at each other. In any urban area, these sectors are often near (but not limited to) any park or area named after Martin Luther King.

If you're going to talk about medicare and social security - the demographics are self-targeting and have little to do with geography.

The medicare system needs to be restructured to be more efficient and more difficult to spoof. 60 billion dollars are estimated to be annual waste due to fraud. www.cbsnews.com...

(CBS) But it's not just Miami: in March, the FBI arrested 53 people in Detroit, including a number of doctors, and charged them with billing Medicare more than $50 million for unnecessary medical procedures.

And in Los Angeles, the City of Angels Medical Center recruited homeless people off the street to fill their empty beds, offering them cash and drugs plus clean sheets and three square meals a day, while billing Medicare tens of millions of dollars for their stay.

Read more: www.cbsnews.com...

Asked if he actually ever sold any medical equipment, Tony said, "No. Just have somebody in an office answering the phone, like we're open for business. And wake up in the morning, see how much, check your bank account and see how much money you made today."

He told Kroft he didn't have any medical equipment or real clients - all of it was fake.

"And you would just fill out some invoices and some forms and send 'em to Medicare?" Kroft asked.

"That's it. In 15 to 30 days you'll have a direct deposit in your bank account. I mean it was ridiculous. It's more like taking candy from a baby," Tony said.

Read more: www.cbsnews.com...

Once the crooked companies get hold of the patient lists, usually stolen from doctors' offices or hospitals, they begin running up all sorts of outlandish charges and submit them to Medicare for payment, knowing full well that the agency is required by law to pay the claims within 15 to 30 days, and that it has only enough auditors to check a tiny fraction of the charges to see if they are legitimate.

Read more: www.cbsnews.com...

Here is another interesting article: www.oftwominds.com...

Medicare program costs have risen from $70 billion in 1985 to $162 billion in 1994 to $390 billion in 2007 and are estimated to rise to $500 billion in 2011. Adjusted for inflation, that $70 billion 20 years ago should only be $130 billion now, not $390 billion. Are we three times healthier than in 1985? There's a variety of metrics we could use, but we shouldn't rely too heavily on longevity, in my view; "quality of life" (though harder to measure) is what counts to the patient and his/her family.

This lack of patient responsibility is built into the system. The system is set up to "process" lumps of passive clay: cut 'em open, give 'em meds, send 'em home. Here's just one example. My 80-year old father has osteoporosis. For this he has been given various puffers and pills to take. But no one in Medicare, or the entire vast system it feeds, has ever demanded that he do anything himself to improve his condition, though what this is--simple exercise--is well known: Bone density sharply enhanced by weight training, even in the elderly.

There is another fatal flaw in Medicare, and the entire U.S. "healthcare" industry: if you want to drive in a thumbtack, all you get is a sledgehammer. A close family friend was an internal medicine MD for decades in a busy urban hospital. He once told me that there was nothing wrong with half the people who came in to see him; they just wanted to talk. My own grandmother combatted loneliness and boredom with weekly visits to the doctor for vague ailments such as knee pain (Tylenol) and feeling low (anti-depressants, which never worked--why? Because she wasn't depressed). The doctor was pleased to bill Medicare for a 5-minute visit.

While essentially a blog - and it reads like one - it makes some valid points, and has citations, if made informally.

The fact of the matter is that medicare's demographics are self-selecting - it's the elderly and the surviving members of families under the age of 21 (or 25 now... whatever the hell they've been changing the laws around to say recently) . It's - theoretically - paid into by workers as they work, then drawn at retirement or as a sort of life-insurance benefit for their families if something happens. The reality is that no such trust funds really exist (even for social security - it exists in an accounting sense, but not in a practical sense - no stocks are held or any assets held by the trust fund - it is merely numbers on a piece of paper representing the amount of money taken out of checks and the amount of money going out this year). It is all shouldered by the present economy.

As people retire - the working population must support them. The ratio of working:retired is expected to fall to 3:1 within the next 30 years. That's the lowest it has -ever- been. That means the burden on the young and middle aged citizens and families is going to be even higher in the coming years in order to afford the same level of per-capita spending.

There's no way around that without doing an overhaul on social security.

While we're at it - we may as well overhaul social security, military spending, and education. Why not? Although education is such a small portion of the federal budget (and, indeed, should not even be part of the federal budget) that it is insignificant by comparison to the three big-spending blowouts in the federal budget - Social Security (Something like 850 Billion), Medicare (About 1.1 Trillion, If I remember correctly - this includes Medicaid and a few other things under that umbrella), and the Military (About 800 Billion - includes procurement and personnel expenses, as well as operational expenses - does not include retirement and benefits).

Those three need to have a nation-wide convention consisting of government, industry, and worker/field experience to make them more efficient, more difficult to spoof, and easier to manage.

Hopefully, we could manage to get much of the same quality for much less spending. At the end of the day, if you are getting the care you need - does it matter if the Medicare budget is half what it was the year before?

Originally posted by kro32
Your not giving a solution because there isn't one.

proof required
wheres the solution that isn't in posts you hate?

The government is working as intended per the founding fathers as laid out in the constitution.

ah yes the federal reserve installed in 1913
makes a lier out of you.

The problem with posts like yours is that you would rather sit back and whine about bad corporations instead of standing up and doing something about it.

i see the wine
wheres the cheese

Originally posted by meeneecat
reply to post by Aim64C

 

I am really not at all interested in talking about "red state" vs "blue state".

Unfortunately, you did choose to use them as the basis for your argument. In reality, it has nothing to do with "states". It is individuals and corporations who pay taxes. It is individuals who receive the greatest portion of federal funds; entitlements.

Now, if the someone would compare "red" ZIP codes to "blue" ZIP codes, it would give a little better picture. But, even then, there are the other factors to consider.