GOP threats to Medicare and Social Security take center stage in last days before election
November 01, 2022
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Trump's new 'fundraising grift' shredded by Morning Joe: 'Being handcuffed means more money'
March 23, 2023
The deadline Donald Trump set for getting arrested for falsifying financial records has come and gone, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out his claims as just another "fundraising grift."
The twice-impeached former president claimed on his Truth Social platform over the weekend that he would be arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan, which has set off days of media speculation and helped funnel $1.5 million into his campaign coffers.
"What do you make of this grifting thing, where Donald Trump, he knew he wasn't going to be charged Tuesday, but he went ahead and did it as a fundraising grift," Scarborough said. "He's raised, well, $1.5 million lying about his pending [indictment]. So why does he want to be handcuffed? He wants to be handcuffed because that means more money."
"I keep talking about the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker approach to American politics, I keep forgetting that this guy has built about five PTL Lands, and yet I'm still surprised by the level of Tammy Faye Bakker in Donald Trump," Scarborough added.
Watch the video below or at this link.
03 23 2023 07 04 19 youtu.be
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Medicare Advantage industry 'scare tactics' and lobbying intensify over efforts to curb fraud
March 23, 2023
In the wake of numerous studies and investigations detailing the staggering level of fraud in the privately run Medicare Advantage program, the Biden administration proposed a new rule aimed at cracking down on upcoding—a common industry practice whereby plans describe patients as sicker than they actually are to reap larger payments from the federal government.
The rule, finalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) earlier this year, sparked a furious lobbying blitz that has only intensified in recent weeks, with the for-profit insurance industry's most powerful players leading the fight against the proposal and other policy changes that they have falsely characterized as Medicare Advantage "cuts."
The New York Timesreported Wednesday that insurance industry executives and lobbyists have been "flooding Capitol Hill" in an effort to protect their lucrative business model, which often leaves patients without necessary care.
"The largest insurers, including UnitedHealth Group and Humana, are among the most vocal, according to congressional staff, with UnitedHealth's chief executive pressing his company's case in person," the Times reported. "Doctors' groups, including the American Medical Association, have also voiced their opposition."
The insurance industry has also taken to the media, using sponsored content to launch misleading attacks on the Biden administration's reforms.
In addition to the proposed crackdown on Medicare Advantage upcoding and overbilling—an effort that federal health officials estimate will recover $4.7 billion in improper payments over the next decade—the Biden administration is pushing for technical changes to the formula used to calculate Medicare Advantage payments.
Under the proposed changes, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has noted, "CMS estimates that Medicare Advantage plan payments per enrollee will be 1% higher in 2024 than they are this year."
"The proposed payment changes for 2024, taken together, are unlikely to have a meaningful impact on the trajectory of Medicare Advantage spending, which CBO estimates will exceed $7 trillion (cumulative) through the decade that ends in 2032," KFF explained.
Nevertheless, industry groups and insurance giants have reacted with outrage to the Biden administration's proposals, focusing their ire specifically on plans to tweak the risk adjustment model that dictates how much the federal government pays Medicare Advantage plans to cover beneficiaries.
"Since the proposal was tucked deep in a routine document and published with little fanfare in early February, Medicare officials have been inundated with more than 15,000 comment letters for and against the policies, and roughly two-thirds included identical phrases from form letters," the Times reported Wednesday. "Insurers used television commercials and other strategies to urge Medicare Advantage customers to contact their lawmakers. The effort generated about 142,000 calls or letters to protest the changes."
The Medicare Advantage industry and its Republican allies in Congress insist the Biden administration's proposed changes would result in higher premiums for the program's tens of millions of beneficiaries and potentially impact the quality of care—but experts, advocates, and progressive lawmakers are pushing back.
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) defended the administration's proposals against Medicare Advantage industry "scare tactics" and argued that "these companies have built entire businesses around making beneficiaries look as sick as possible."
"The more diagnosis codes that a beneficiary has, the higher the payment, and whatever insurers don't spend on care they actually get to keep," Warren said. "Unsurprisingly, government watchdogs have discovered widespread abuse."
Kaiser Health Newsreported late last year that government audits have uncovered "widespread overcharges and other errors in payments to Medicare Advantage health plans, with some plans overbilling the government more than $1,000 per patient a year on average."
One Cigna executive, according to a lawsuit against the insurance giant, privately described certain diagnoses as "golden nuggets," an apparent reference to larger government payments for patients who are presented as sicker.
A KFF analysis published last month found that "Medicare Advantage plans have far higher per person gross margins—more than double those seen in other markets in 2021."
Advocacy organizations—including groups representing physicians, nurses, and seniors—have attempted to counter the torrent of industry-backed criticism of the Biden administration's proposals via the public comment process.
"The proposed reforms resulting in a limit of 1% increase is still an increase, which we understand is being opposed by the [Medicare Advantage] industry and their associations, and being mischaracterized as a cut. It is a cut only as far as it doesn't replicate the huge 8% increase granted last year," said California State Retirees.
Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), an advocacy group that supports single-payer healthcare, said earlier this month that "accountability to both Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers instead of to investors and corporate greed is long overdue."
"We encourage CMS not to give in to industry lobbying pressure, and to implement the proposed changes without compromising, and we believe even stronger measures are needed. After all, it is the mission of CMS to protect the integrity of the Medicare program," PNHP added. "The profitability of MA plans has rested heavily on gaming strategies and fraud."
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Forty years after US president Ronald Reagan stunned the nation and world with his "Star Wars" plan to take nuclear competition into outer space, a new battle of the satellites has emerged in the stratosphere.
Largely because it far outpaced technology at the time, very little became of Reagan's March 23, 1983 declaration that the United States would head to space to seek absolute supremacy in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless space ultimately has become a major theater of strategic competition -- just not the way Reagan envisioned. Instead of missiles launched from orbit to attack rivals, thousands of satellites are now the focus of sometimes tense dynamics between the United States, Soviet Union successor Russia, and China.
Also defying Reagan's vision, the US does not have any clear advantage: China especially is showing its ability to match or even lead the United States.
'Hope for our children'
Reagan's program was officially the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
But it immediately became known as Star Wars, for its evocation of Hollywood sci-fi visions of fantastic weaponry beaming through the cosmos.
That was where America's technological prowess would dominate, Reagan declared.
"I've reached a decision which offers a new hope for our children in the 21st century," he said, in language echoing the 1977 "Star Wars" film, subtitled "A New Hope."
Global security would no longer rest on the principle that neither the United States nor the Soviets could survive a nuclear exchange -- the so-called mutual assured destruction (MAD) doctrine, he said.
Instead, American technology would produce space weapons to instantly pulverize any Soviet nuclear missiles launched at the United States.
"We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression," Reagan said.
Satellite wars
Billions of dollars went into SDI, to develop space-based laser and particle-beam weapons and launchers for ballistic missile-destroying rockets.
But his ideas were unfeasible; the technology didn't exist.
A decade later, Star Wars disappeared, quietly folded into a more conventional nuclear deterrent program: ground-based missile defense.
Today, with Russia menacing Ukraine with nuclear weapons and China accelerating production of missiles and warheads, MAD remains the main reason nuclear war hasn't broken out.
Yet Reagan's vision of space as a battle theater did materialize.
Today, orbiting satellites are crucial tools of war -- and as the electronic backbone of ground-based conflict they are also the primary targets.
Back in 1983, satellites were large and hugely expensive; only about 360 were in orbit.
Now, according to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, there are 9,312 circling above us.
About 2,700 rocketed into orbit last year alone, according to Euroconsult.
Many are small, cheap and operate in networks for civilian communications, research and business use.
But hundreds, if not thousands, are military and intelligence units.
Some are launched as mini-satellite networks to provide early warning for ballistic missile launches.
Space stalkers
But they don't just conduct surveillance.
Washington, Moscow and Beijing have developed "space stalker" satellites that can be manipulated to physically interfere with others.
With robotic arms and grappling claws, "they can just stalk the opponent satellite and move it somewhere else, or bend an antenna" to render it useless, according to Brian Chow, an independent space policy analyst.
Experts say satellites under development will have weapons that can shoot rival units or send explosive charges to blow them up.
In addition, China and the United States both have ultra-secret programs of small, reusable, robotic, winged spacecraft which could be armed to damage a rival's satellites.
Meanwhile, the superpowers have abilities -- which they regularly use -- to jam and spoof satellite signals, doing so from both the ground and orbit.
All three countries have also demonstrated they can launch a missile from Earth that can destroy an orbiting satellite.
The Pentagon says China has ground-based laser stations that can interfere with if not disable satellites; presumably the United States and Russia have, or are developing, similar capability.
One thing Reagan did not envision was putting nuclear weapons in orbit. That was banned in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which most countries have joined.
But there have been few other limitations on space strife.
Last April Washington took one baby step in this regard, hoping to bring Russia and China with them.
Vice President Kamala Harris said the United States would renounce testing of ground-launched anti-satellite missiles, and urged rivals to do the same.
Such tests leave large amounts of dangerous debris circling the planet.
"Without clear norms, we face unnecessary risks in space," Harris said.
© 2023 AFP
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