Romney Chooses Paul Ryan For VP Slot

Mitt Romney has made his decision. He will go with Wisconsin Republican firebrand Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidental selection. It's somewhat odd to make that move on a Saturday morning, but it does mean he gets to dominate the Sunday talk shows, but it doesn't mean nearly as much press as if he held off until Monday - after the Olympics. People are still focusing on sports and not on politics at this point, but the Romney campaign must be feeling the heat and need to stem a tide of bad polling, and the fact that Romney essentially called for mercy to stop harping on Romney's tax and business records, and that Romney's own goals on health care reform and other assorted lies, misstatements, and gaffes.

Ryan will give Romney a short-lived bounce. It gives Romney a breather, but does it really benefit him in November?

Well, it improves his chances of holding on to the red-meat GOPers and right wingers, and could help with Wisconsin and Midwest, but that could be more than offset by the fact that Ryan's plan would gut the safety net - from Social Security to Medicare and Medicaid - programs that most Americans believe are good programs and are to their benefit (even if they may also think that some kind of incremental reforms are needed over time). After all, independents and moderates are going to have serious issues with what the GOP and the socons are looking to do. So, the overall effect will be negative since it reinforces everything that we already knew or expected from Romney.

New Medicare Study Finds Still More Fraud

Can you say more than 10% of the annual Medicare budget is fraudulent? I knew you could.

Indeed, Weiner & Co. may want to check out the numbers in an explosive new federal report.

According to the survey, Washington paid more than $47 billion in questionable or fraudulent Medicare claims in FY 2009 -- fully 12.4 percent of the $440 billion program's annual budget.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report says Medicare fraud for the first nine months of 2009 increased at a rate nearly triple the previous year.
Chad Rachman/N.Y.Post

Not that fraud is necessarily on the rise: New methodology uncovered previously undisclosed improper payments -- meaning that Medicare fraud likely has been rampant for years.

Moreover, according to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), federal watchdogs received 30 fraud warnings over the previous years from inspectors, including of organized crime scams and physician kickbacks -- and simply ignored them.

Every year we're talking tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent payments. That's real money that has gone down the rabbit hole.

And one has to wonder how much more fraud is out there for prior years based on the improved fraud detection techniques.

If the amount of fraud is reduced, the costs of the program are reduced; lowering the cost of health care and insuring that payments go to responsible parties. Moreover, the federal government has repeatedly failed to overhaul the system to root out the fraudulent payments.

Distilling the Resistance To Its Essence

This entire debate on health care can boil down to the following:

What's in it for me.

For the 85% of Americans who have insurance, they want to know two basic things - will they get to keep their existing coverage, and how much more in taxes are they going to be hit with.

For the 15%, how much will it cost?

So far, the President has done nothing to explain how much this will cost - and that's the key factor in all this. He can't come up with a realistic figure unless he admits to higher taxes.

And as for just how many people are uninsured, this site claims 46 million under 65 are uninsured, which with a population size of 300 million means that 85% of all Americans are insured, either through Medicare, Medicaid (for those over 65), SCHIP or similar government insurance programs for poor and/or children, or private insurance. This multitrillion dollar overhaul would try to increase the insurance coverage to the remaining 15%.

Most of those who are uninsured are those who no longer get covered by their parents (18/21 yo cutoff) and haven't found full time jobs that include health insurance coverage. There's no breakdown of how many of that 46 million are illegal aliens, though there is a figure that the number of Hispanics who are uninsured, which is significantly higher than the percentage of uninsured among the general population.

The 85% want to know what's in this overhaul for them. They're the ones most likely to vote, and will be most likely to bear the burden of any cost shifting.

Flowing from that core question are additional questions, that explain how this program will supposedly work, what it will cost, and how it will change existing health care delivery.

These questions include the following:

1. How is it that you can put together a health care bill without knowing how to pay for it? As admitted by Members of Congress (Ben Cardin), no one knows how this will all be paid for. Wouldn't it make more sense to know first where the money comes from and design a system than try and throw everything and the kitchen sink and realize later you have to raise taxes?
2. Where are you drawing the line on the income level of those who will see an increase in their taxes as a result of this plan?
3. Is there a penalty for people opting not to obtain health insurance, and what is the thinking behind limiting personal choice in that fashion. After all, if that person doesn't want to pay for the health insurance, and is penalized, that's a back-door tax.
4. How much will this realistically cost, given that every other government program has gone staggeringly over cost projections?
5. How long will I have under my existing program until the government health care forces me into the public plan?
6. Why should public health care improve quality when we've got examples from other countries where care becomes far more restrictive and quality of care is substandard in US government health care programs like the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Administration?
7. Cash for clunkers anyone? If you can't manage a $1 (now $3) billion program adequately, how can anyone expect the government to do a better job with a significant portion of the US GNP. No one understood how many vehicles were in the pipeline for rebates or where the balance stood. The same can apply to the billions utilized under TARP. How can you manage costs when the government can't even keep track of the money on its books.
8. One of the big selling points you've made is that this will be cost effective and save money. How exactly can you make that argument when not even the Congressional Budget Office buys that argument?
9. 9) Medicare and Medicaid are prime examples of government health care programs run amok. They're tens of billions of dollars in debt, and yet this program would apparently expand both significantly, all while further constraining the charges - something has to give.
10. The final question goes to motive. What is the specific reasoning behind your demand that health care reform had to be completed by August recess? After all, access to health care isn't ending at that (or any point), and we've been living with this system for decades. The demand to have this change practically overnight, with limited debate - and without reading (as admitted by many members of Congress) suggests that the Administration is less than honest in what your ultimate aim is here.

Curing the health care system doesn't require killing the patient (the health care system). Yet, that's precisely what it looks like to many people who want to know why the Administration is pushing this as a crisis when few people are devoid of health care options.

President Obama has clearly stated that he will not sign any bill that will add to the deficit. Really? I'd like to see how he can keep that particular promise when he can't adequately explain how this proposal will be paid for in the current year, let alone adequately provide for funding in future years. It's simply unknowable, but based on prior government health care initiatives, one should take any claims of cost savings and/or cost containment with a grain of salt.

After all, we have clear examples of how the US government has failed to properly account for health care costs. Take the prescription drug program for example. The Bush Administration pushed through that program, and understated the costs by half.

If that's any guide, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in understated costs (on a trillion dollar program) at a time when we simply cannot afford any such thing.

Medicare Fraud Bust Nets $371 Million

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Attorney General Eric Holder charged 145 people in defrauding Medicare to the tune of $371 million by filing false claims.

Using about a dozen agents in targeted cities, including Miami, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, has recovered $371 million in false Medicare claims and charged 145 people across the country in just two months.

More than 200 agents worked on Wednesday's $16 million bust that included 12 search warrants at health care businesses and homes across the Houston area.

Federal authorities say those businesses were giving patients "arthritis kits," which were nothing more than expensive orthotics that included knee and shoulder braces. Patients told authorities they were unnecessary and many never used them. But health care clinic owners billed between $3,000 to $4,000 for each kit.

Houston's other scam involved billing Medicare for thousands of dollars worth of liquid food like Ensure for patients who can't eat solid food. Authorities said clinic owners never distributed the food to patients. In some cases, clinic owners billed patients who were dead when they allegedly received the items.

The suspects arrested Wednesday in Houston will make court appearances Thursday morning. Suspects in Boston, New York and Louisiana will have first appearances later today.

The first task force started in 2007 in Miami, a city authorities say alone is responsible for more than $3 billion a year in Medicare fraud. Clinic owners there would bill Medicare dozens of times for the same wheelchair, while never giving the medical equipment to patients.

The problems have become more complex since then.

Suspects have moved into more sophisticated scams including home health care, physical therapy and infusion drugs. They've even started tapping into Medicaid Advantage, which allows the elderly and disabled to get benefits through private health insurers. The plans receive a government subsidy and generally offer more benefits than traditional Medicare.

The $371 million is just from two months worth of claims. You want to reign in costs? Cut the fraud. I suspect that this is all for show though in order to get the comprehensive health care bill passed, even though it does nothing to avoid the massive fraud we're seeing in Medicare and Medicaid.

Scare Tactics and What Compulsory Coverage Really Means

If you are one of the millions of people who have chosen not to obtain health insurance, you're going to be forced to do so. It will cost you heavily. That's precisely what compulsory coverage means. It means that the government will force you to buy coverage, whether you want it or not, and it will mean that you will have less disposable income at the end of the day.

The requirement, known as an individual mandate, is among the most far-reaching changes envisioned this year by those pushing for health-care reform. And it is one of the few common threads running through all three bills being considered in Congress, greatly increasing the likelihood it will survive the legislative process. Obama continued Tuesday to push lawmakers struggling with the large costs and scope of health legislation to move forward, pronouncing reform to be "closer than ever."

Just as drivers must purchase auto insurance, the medical system of the future would put responsibility for health coverage first and foremost on every adult.

For the vast majority of Americans who have health insurance, the change would mean little more than submitting a form with their tax returns proving that the plan they carry meets certain minimum standards. Many of the nation's 47 million uninsured people, however, would be required to purchase a health policy or face financial penalties, though waivers or discounts would be provided for lower-income Americans.

Compulsory coverage means that those who choose not to obtain coverage will be penalized - taxed in some amount that will equate with obtaining coverage.

There will be millions of people, mainly in the middle class who will be squeezed heavily by these proposals. They will not get the waivers and discounts promised or alleged, because they will earn too much to get the "free" care, but not enough that they can actually afford these new more onerous requirements.

In other words, the Demcorats' proposals goes against everything that President Obama promised during his days on the campaign trail.

AT tonight's press conference, someone should ask President Obama why he's endorsing, and not threatening to veto, the 1,018-page House health-care reform bill now being rushed to passage: It breaks nearly all his core promises about health-care reform.

"If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything," Obama said on Oct. 15, 2008. "If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. . . And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year."

Both these solemn pledges, repeated often ever since and as recently as yesterday, are violated in the House bill. Its perverse incentives, plus the onerous regulations Congress plans to impose on employer-provided insurance, would cause more than half of those with employer-provided insurance to lose it -- 83.4 million Americans, according to The Lewin Group, a prominent, politically neutral health-care analysis firm.

The Lewin Group goes on to show that it will raise costs for nearly everyone, will not contain health care costs, and will lead to the elimination of private insurance as government health insurance undercuts the private insurers all while feeding the massive deficit.

Why should we trust President Obama when he says that the health care bills making their way through Congress must be passed now because of the urgency of the situation? There's absolutely no reason to trust him, or what any of the other politicians have to say on the matter. They're not going to suffer from the choices they make. Their health care will remain as it is, while everyone else has to deal with new more onerous rules, higher costs, lower quality of care, and rationing of care. They have no idea what any of this will cost, as John Stossel notes:

Also leave aside the inevitable huge cost of any such program. The administration estimates $1.5 trillion over 10 years with no increase in the deficit. But no one should take that seriously. When it comes to projecting future costs, these guys may as well be reading chicken entrails. In 1965, hospitalization coverage under Medicare was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual price tag was $66 billion.

The sober Congressional Budget Office debunked the reformers' cost projections. Trust us, Obama says. "At the end of the day, we'll have significant cost controls," presidential adviser David Axelrod said. Give me a break.

And for those who think that because the AMA is behind Obama on this means that all is well, consider that there was a provision included in the bill that essentially is a payoff to the medical establishment to attempt to cover the costs of a massive shortfall in payments due to Medicare.

In the bill, Democrats provide $245 billion to eliminate an annual shortfall in payments to doctors under Medicare. Democrats resolved this annual headache, in large part, to win crucial support for the bill from the American Medical Association. That money currently counts against the overall costs of the bill, but Democrats have introduced legislation that would remove remove this obligation from federal deficit.

The move to remove this obligation from the federal deficit is further proof of just how fiscally irresponsible and disingenuous the Democrats are with the budget generally, and health care specifically. Someone has to pay for those costs, and it's coming from somewhere, and it isn't the current year revenues, which means that it will be added to the towering deficit pile built by this Administration in just six months.

The irony is rather thick for the Administration to claim that opponents are using scare tactics to prevent passage of the health care all while claiming that if we don't pass this now before the sky falls there will be a health care disaster waiting in the wings. They're going to ram it through.

Ann Althouse notes:

The Democrats have dumped a drastic, complicated health care bill on us and they are ramming it through before we can even figure it out. That’s what matters, not the fact that the party out of power is squawking about it.

They're more than willing to ram it through without fellow Democrats figuring it out, and that includes President Obama, who remains clueless as to all the contingencies in the bills as currently written.

Sorry, but the only disaster waiting in the wings is the fiscal time bomb of unfunded mandates relating to existing government entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, none of which are truly addressed by the Democrats' plans.

Who Is Cheering For Big Government?

USA Today has a misleading headline story claiming that people are cheering the return of big government (for now).

Most Americans say they're glad Big Government is back to help through hard times. But they aren't sure they want it to stay.

The Obama administration, trying to reverse the economy's meltdown and prevent it from happening again, is redefining the role of the federal government in the economy — spending trillions of dollars, building new regulatory systems for financial institutions and effectively taking over a major part of the automobile industry.

Although an expansive federal government hasn't had a defender in the White House for nearly a half-century — since Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society program — most Americans in a nationwide USA TODAY/Gallup Poll approve of President Obama and the government's latest assertiveness. However, some of the steps he has ordered have made them wary.

By 3-to-1, those surveyed say government's expansion should be cut back when the economic crisis is over.

"They should do whatever is necessary, especially for the automobile business," says Lee Heffner, 78, of Temple, Pa., who was among those polled. For 50 years, he ran the Ford dealership his father founded during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even so, he worries, "it seems we're on the trend of nationalization for a lot of things. Once the government gets into something, it's very seldom they back out of it."

Obama on Tuesday defended his economic proposals and the results they've gotten so far, calling it "a new foundation" for sustainable economic growth through this century. "We have been called to govern in extraordinary times," he said in the speech at Georgetown University, cautioning that 2009 "will continue to be a difficult year."

The White House, experimenting with Washington's role in the economy, is taking unprecedented steps: helping some homeowners who can't handle their mortgage payments, underwriting the warranties for GM and Chrysler cars and organizing a huge public-private rescue plan to buy up banks' most troubled assets. The Treasury Department on Friday pegged the budget deficit for this year at $1.75 trillion, nearly quadruple last year's record shortfall.

The moves have raised questions about how far government should go in directing the market — and whether, in some sectors, it could wind up deciding which businesses survive and which ones fail. An opening sketch this month on NBC's Saturday Night Live showed a faux Obama delivering edicts on the survival of everything from fast-food chains to makers of jeans. ("Levi's, yes," the Obama impersonator deadpanned. "Wrangler, no.")

Where to begin with this mess? How about with the polling figures that show that most Americans think that Congress and the Administration have spent too much money on the stimulus package (aka porkfest). 55% think that they spent too much. I'd say that's a repudiation of the idea of big government right there. It also is why the Tea Party protests have picked up steam around the country.

The breakdown of whether government has taken too much power is close - 46% the Administration has the right amount of power, while 40% think they got too much. I'd say that as more people realize the extent to which the Administration has grabbed power at the expenses of citizens, the states, and businesses, those numbers will turn around.

Strangely, the percentage of people who think that government is doing too much is 50% compares with 42% who think that government should be doing more.

Taken together, it suggests that the Administration is heading for a backlash.

Has anyone actually polled to find out whether we won that War on Poverty? Big government programs have been mostly a disaster, destroying inner cities with such ideas as urban renewal (destroying tenements and building densely packed housing projects that destroyed the social fabric of communities and allowed the rise of crime and decay through urban areas across the country). Other big government projects resulted in massive spending with no care for the consequences of paying for the programs down the road - think Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Also ignored by USA Today is the rise of the Tea Party protests, which started as a grassroots protest against out of control government spending. The protests have spread across the country and show that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the exorbitant spending beyond our national means. Throwing hundreds of billions at failed companies and then hundreds of billions more at pork barrel programs that may not even get started for several years as a stimulus to the economy now is an insult to our collective intelligence.

The economy has been showing signs of recovery even before the porkfest projects get underway. The government, had it chosen to not spend one penny on new programs in the porkfest, would have saved more than $1 trillion. Instead, we'll be paying off that massive spending for generations to come. Our grandkids will be paying for this costly choice.

It's not simply anti-spending that is fueling the Tea Party protests, but the out-of-control spending that threatens to undermine confidence in the US government and the financial markets. The Obama Administration is not letting the crisis pass without taking full advantage of the situation by pushing through an agenda that massively expands government programs and projects. It's the priorities of the Administration that are at issue as well; the Administration doesn't seem to find the money to pay for improving and expanding the US military at a time when the kinds of threats to the nation are growing.

UPDATE:
For those interested in attending NJ Tea Parties, the Record has a list of locations, including the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack and the offices of US Senator Bob Menendez and Sen. Frank Lautenberg in Newark.

UPDATE:
Twitter has running updates of various Tea Parties going on around the country, including photos and blog posts. (HT: Instapundit)