Predicted what, you ask? Oh, that private companies contracting with the federal government to provide services and oversight for the Medicare Drug Benefit Program might defraud the government out of millions of dollars, that’s all:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government auditors said they found nearly $90 million in potentially questionable payments from the Medicare program to contractors helping enact the prescription drug benefit for the elderly and disabled. […]
The contractors helped with marketing and with oversight of the 1-800-Medicare help line. They also provided technical expertise. The questionable payments represent about $1 out every $7 spent.
Auditors said they found payments that did not comply with the terms of contracts. For example, the agency paid more than the contract’s ceiling amount and for travel costs that exceeded allowable limits. In other cases, it could not obtain adequate documentation to support costs billed, such as invoices or time sheets. In one case, the agency was billed twice for $95,000 worth of equipment.
The auditors said that Medicare’s contracting has more than doubled over the past decade. Yet, the number of full-time employees providing contract oversight went up 11 percent during that time.
Now this is not fraud by the pharmaceutical companies. This is merely fraud by the outsourced private companies who were supposed to market the new Medicare drug benefits to Medicare recipients, as well as provide “oversight” for the program. Still, $1 out of every $7 paid by the government to these contractors was deemed “questionable” at best. Makes one wonder how bad the fraud and waste might be from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies who are reaping billions of dollars of profits from the drug benefit plan, the same plan conceived and pushed through a bamboozled and compliant Congress by the Bush administration that screwed over so many Medicare patients when it was implemented.
Just part and parcel of a by now familiar, and discredited, Republican and conservative agenda to “privatize” as many government services as possible. The assumption held by many conservatives was that private companies would be less wasteful of our tax dollars and more efficient than “Big Guvmint” bureaucracies. Indeed, this is the same assumption that also lies at the heart of the outsourcing of military and other services in Iraq and Afghanistan to Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, etc. Supposedly those private contractors would save us billions of dollars that would otherwise be wasted by the Feds and/or the US Military. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the reverse has been the case. For example, helped in large part by the billions of wasteful dollars paid to private government contractors, we now know that President Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in six short years have already outstripped the entire amount the US government spent on the Vietnam war, making it the second costliest US conflict in history:
According to a study by the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Congress has now approved nearly $700 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the total cost of those wars has now surpassed the total cost of the Vietnam war (which ran to $670 billion),” the group’s Travis Sharp told OneWorld. “It’s also more than seven times larger than the Persian Gulf War ($94 billion) and more than twice the cost of the Korean war ($295 billion).”As a result of Wednesday’s vote, Sharp said, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will become the second costliest conflict in American history, trailing only World War II.
In WWII, America fought on three continents and two oceans against the combined might of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, adversaries with millions of soldiers and sailors serving in their armed forces who employed some of the most technologically advanced weapons (for their time) against our troops. In Iraq and Afghanistan? Not so much. Indeed, one could say never in history has so much been spent to achieve so little in war. But give Bush enough time (and an unlimited credit account from Congress) and I’m sure he can beat the fiscal record set by the Greatest Generation. And the private companies who are benefiting from all of this public largesse will continue to reap their undeserved rewards even as our nation goes further and further into debt.
“the reverse has been the case…”
The reverse has always been the case….even by legitimate participants operating within the law. Isn’t the additional 15-20% cost of privitized medical care (the insurance companies, hospital corporations, the pharmaceutical industry) also a rip off of dollars that could be applied to covering uninsured and underinsured people?
Quote of the day from author Benjamin Barber:
Or in this case rigging the system to sell us the services we do not need.
I’m keeping that quote.
An aside, I’ve discovered Reeve Lindbergh, daughter of Charles & Anne Lindbergh. She writes (“Under a Wing” a memoir) of a family (3 brothers & 1 sister) raised by a father who studiously prepared his children for any and all contingencies life might throw at them. In a time where I am so tired of the abuse Condi & friends have directed toward the word Predicted, this book and the Lindbergh philosophy is a welcome insight into life without excuses.
Just heard an opinion, possibly on the Bill Moyers show on PBS, that Big Business has run out of things to sell us in the US, and is now focusing on creating needs. Remember the Houla Hoop? Maybe they could bring it back.
Steven- the greater tragedy is that the former minority and now majority party have not stood up and seriously challenged the gop! Given the Dodd actions this past week, the great lie is now public information. As you know from past postings, I am a supporter of the progressive positions and it hurts deeply to have to accept the fact the Dems are just as culpable if not more so than the goopers! It can no longer be claimed that they have been seriously trying. Just looking at the public out cry and the pressure brought to bear once someone was willing to stand up and say-ENOUGH!
A blind person saw what the gop plan was and yet lip service was given and alot of moaning was all that was heard about the inability of the dems to do anything to stop the goopers.
So, predicting is no longer worth the energy it takes to express. I give you one concrete example- For the second time the Senate has been called into a Pro forma session! Why? To stop the beast from showing his total disregard for the Constitution! It was successful at the Thanksgiving recess and it will be successful this time. The tragedy is that it had to be used at all. Had the dems stood up as Dodd did, there would have been no need. Just look at the reaction of the PEOPLE!
Had there been a real Democratic Party, with True Representatives OF THE PEOPLE these bastards would have been unable to dismantle the Military, the FDA, The EPA, The CPSC- just to name a few! I could go on but ya know what?
Here is a “Prediction(Ha!) At the rate that the Dems have caved during the past 7 years, they will lose not only the Presidency but they might just lose at least one house in the Congress!
Hows that for a PREDICTION?
The thesis that private industry is more efficient than government has always been an ideological assumption. Private industry CAN be more efficient when economy of scale is considered. It makes no sense for the government to make its own cars or run its own airline. But any operation in which the scale is large, the need to add a profit makes private industry more costly.
With ample assistance from Democrats, this Neocon/Republican generation has put their unique stamp on the art of ripping off the American people. We watched these politicians facilitate corporate GOP backers reap unprecedented profits. But their true innovation is the wholesale integration of subcontractor middlemen to power the process. As we’ve seen from Blackwater et al, it’s become a major cottage industry for long time Republican operatives.
AF
And every time you add more layers to this business of government, the potential for fraud increases dramatically…
AF