Medicare 
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Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 03:35:43 PM EDT
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Living down here in the Philadelphia media market, we were bombarded with misleading 2010 ads attacking Democrats for "cutting Medicare." In reality, they had reformed the privatized Medicare Advantage program dreamed up by Republicans, which managed to cost more to the government, not less as promised by conservatives. But the ads worked because seniors love their government Medicare plans.
Conservative Republicans are now revealing their true plans as they have proposed to abolish Medicare for everyone under 55, and replace it with a system of voucher designed to not keep up with inflation. This is now the moment of truth for Democrats. Nancy Pelosi was right in 2005 when she revealed her schedule to negotiate with Bush on Social Security: "Never. Is never good enough for you?"
There's plenty of issues the Democrats disagree about, but Medicare isn't one of them. If the public wants to abolish Medicare, let them vote Republican. I say the 2010 campaign shows the public wants just the opposite.
Rush Holt understands:
Budgets are moral documents. They reflect, in dollars and cents, our real priorities. Republican priorities are clear: abandoning the most vulnerable in our society by destroying Medicare and Medicaid in order to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
Frank Lautenberg understands:
This budget is more proof that Tea Party extremists have toppled the Republican House leadership and completely taken over. The House Republican Tea Partiers started with cuts to Head Start, education and medical research, and now they want to privatize Medicare. If you are a child seeking an education or an older American seeking health care,the Tea Party budget is toxic to your future.
Every other Democrat must oppose this plan, and every Republican needs to be put on record that they plan to abolish the Medicare program if they get the Senate and Presidency.
Update: Frank Pallone reminded me that Medicaid is at issue too:
"Converting Medicaid into block grants is one of the worst health care proposals to be presented to Congress in years"
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Wed Jan 05, 2011 at 04:33:33 PM EST
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For-profit companies "turn around" hospitals, not with a magic bullet but with by, cutting corners, services, and staff. They do it with our tax dollars. And they do it in the dark. The New Jersey State Senate has an important opportunity on January 6 to bring the financial operations of these companies into the public light and out of secret boardrooms.
These for-profit hospitals use the same increasingly scarce public sources of funding - Medicare, Medicaid, Charity Care, and Family Care, as our non-profit hospitals. Yet the current financial reporting requirements are very weak. For-profit hospitals must be held to the same standards of financial transparency and accountability as our non-profit hospitals. Shouldn't the communities they serve know how much is being spent on compensation for top executives or on supplies and services provided by the owners' affiliates and subsidiaries-particuarly when much of the revenue is the result of our tax dollars? Maybe, but they are not.
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Fri Nov 27, 2009 at 05:17:51 PM EST
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Here's an interesting November 19, 2009 press release from Frank LoBiondo saying "LoBiondo Supports Protecting Local Doctors from Cuts to Medicare Payments":
"For the past seven years, I've supported efforts to protect our doctors and their staffs from scheduled Medicare reimbursement cuts, which in the end would affect the care they are able to give their patients. Today, I voted for a plan that would prevent the scheduled doctors' reimbursement cuts, would not add to the deficit, and would ensure future South Jersey seniors are not shouldering the costs. Regrettably, it was not the bill that was approved by the full House today," said LoBiondo.
What's interesting about this? It's not just that LoBiondo voted against getting rid of the cuts, after all, the press release is clear enough. It's not that he claims to have voted for a Republican alternative, when there was no such vote that day. No, those are all in the days work.
The impressive bit of hypocrisy is that the cuts are due to the "Balanced Budget Act of 1997" (H.R. 2015) which, of course, Frank LoBiondo and his Republican colleagues made law. These cuts are entirely his creation! When the Republican party actually cared about deficits -- at least the name of the 1997 law says they did -- they created a "Sustainable Growth Rate" formula which would have reduced the deficit by paying doctors less. Whether it's a good idea or not, I don't know, but it is the law thanks to Frank LoBiondo's 1997 votes, whatever press release he sends out in 2009.
Sadly, we can expect that no reporter will ever notice the contradiction.
Also available at Frank LoBiondo record.
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Mon Aug 24, 2009 at 03:00:00 PM EDT
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They are going to be testing a new program here in New Jersey that will attempt to cut down on some of the healthcare costs for Medicare:Twelve New Jersey hospitals and their participating physicians are taking part in the Physician Hospital Collaboration Demonstration, a Medicare project that will evaluate gainsharing as an innovative new incentive method that aims to reduce healthcare costs while improving quality of care. Here's more about the program they are trying out:NJHA spearheaded the effort to win a waiver from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to test the initiative in New Jersey. Called "gainsharing," the program offers physicians financial incentives to work with hospitals in lowering costs in a variety of ways. The program also includes stringent quality controls to protect patients.
The program is designed to encourage physicians and hospitals to work together to provide the most efficient care for patients. Currently, Medicare reimburses hospitals a fixed rate for treating a Medicare patient, based on the patient's diagnosis. But physicians are paid differently, receiving individual payments for each procedure or each day spent in the hospital. Those very different payment philosophies are inconsistent, and the gainsharing project aims to bring them together.
Under gainsharing, physicians may share a portion of the savings that are realized by working with the hospital to make a patient's stay more efficient. We constantly hear about the disparity in reimbursement rates and it's an interesting approach that provides incentives to the physician by allowing them to share in the savings that are realized, while at the same time cutting down on the overall cost of the sytem in the process.
The goal of the program is to use the data, from quality of care to cost savings, to help determine whether its strategies could be replicated nationwide. I'll put the participating hospitals below the fold.
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Fri Aug 14, 2009 at 01:30:00 PM EDT
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I am so tired of seeing these lazy talking points from our elected officials as to why they cannot support the healthcare bill. Here's a line from Frank LoBiondo:"A government bureaucrat cannot get in the way between a patient and a doctor," he said. "The provisions are not cost effective and not best for the patient." So the Congressman would like to get rid of Medicare too, because clearly the government runs that program. From Wikipedia:The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), administers Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). Along with the Departments of Labor and Treasury, CMS also implements the insurance reform provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The Social Security Administration is responsible for determining Medicare eligibility and processing premium payments for the Medicare program. I'm sure the seniors in his district will like that idea. The families that support him would love to lose their SCHIP insurance as well. And those low income supporters will jump at the opportunity to lose their medicaid. I'm sure that will really help our health care situation.
And why is a government bureaucrat so much worse than an insurance bureaucrat? If LoBiondo is so serious about what he's saying, let him introduce legislation to get rid of these programs. Otherwise, he should find another talking point to justify his opposition to covering people.
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Tue Oct 07, 2008 at 11:02:01 AM EDT
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Talk about trying to plug one hole while opening up another. Here's a little bit from the WSJ on what McCain is proposing for his healthcare plan:In exchange, the government would begin taxing the value of health benefits people get through work. If an employer spends $10,000 to buy a worker health insurance, the worker would pay taxes on that money. Now they've decided where to get the money from:John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs....
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Hmm, I wonder how NJ Seniors feel about this? In Minnesota, Senator Norm Coleman's spokesman actually turned to Obama's plan when asked about if his boss would support the McCain Medicare cuts:Again, it would depend on what was in the bill. ...I'm sure, some things that will line up. I mean, they are both pretty comprehensive plans. I'm sure there are some things that line up from Senator Obama's plan as well. The silence from NJ GOP candidates on the proposal from their Presidential hopeful is deafening. At least Seniors will have that tax credit to make up for the coverage they don't have anymore. That should make them sleep well at night
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Sun Jan 14, 2007 at 09:18:33 PM EST
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Here's Mike Ferguson's (R-NJ7) statement on the floor of the House on the new bill that will authorize the Medicare program to negotiate pharmaceutical prices in Part D. We've added a few lines that were in the prepared speech we found in an unsecure folder on his website, but strangely were not delivered on the floor.
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately [for my huge contributors in the pharmaceutical industry] today we are hearing a lot from the proponents of H.R. 4 [but I will try to obfuscate and twist the facts so you get confused]. We are hearing a lot of misinformation and lot of rhetoric [as I speak now], and I think some of these things need to be corrected for the record [but they won't be corrected by me].
The biggest misconception is that the buying power of Medicare patients is currently unused [though it is being misused because it is being split up amongst hundreds of plans], and that somehow this new plan is the only way to leverage lower prices for prescription drugs [which it is, but ignore that fact]. In fact, prescription drug plans under Medicare part D right now are aggressively negotiating discounts [but not passing them along to the taxpayers, since they are trying to maximize profits]; they have been before part D [for themselves as they try to maximize their own profits], and they continue to do so very well since the program's inception [just one year ago] and they are going to continue to look to negotiate lower prices [so they can, again, maximize their profits on the backs of the taxpayers]. They have been negotiating [for their own benefit] and giving beneficiaries choices [that can change at any time even though the beneficiary is stuck with that plan for a year] and access to the newest breakthrough therapies [that the drug plan providers choose to offer].
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Fri Jan 12, 2007 at 11:40:08 AM EST
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Today's Star-Ledger has an op-ed from former Republican Senatorial nominee and member of the US House of Representatives, Bob Franks. It is further evidence of the theory that there is no such thing as a moderate in the Republican Party any longer. With former Republican maverick John McCain busy proving he can shill for the President, something Junior Kean proved during this last election cycle, the Republican Party has become home of "the far right and the crazy far right".
Franks got the memo and he's going to light up the talking points here. His target is the new Democratic majority's goal of allowing Medicare D to negotiate lower than market prices with pharmaceutical companies. But, of course, he can't talk about the billions of dollars this will save taxpayers or how it will help the elderly actually get the prescriptions their doctors want them to have. No, he labels the effort "price controls" and casts a blanket condemnation on it.
But if you look not-too-closely at the op-ed, it's plain to see that he's simply talking out of both sides of his mouth.
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Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 10:57:43 AM EDT
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President George Bush and Rep. Mike Ferguson are hurting seniors on the issues that matter most to them – Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drugs.
Instead of working to strengthen Social Security, improve Medicare, and lower the cost of prescription drugs, Bush and Ferguson are doing the opposite and are catering to special interest groups that look to take advantage of seniors.
President Bush and Mike Ferguson should be ashamed of themselves for their positions on Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drugs. Last year, Mike Ferguson even brought President Bush to Westfield to discuss his proposal to privatize Social Security.
Mike Ferguson has voted nine times to raid the Social Security Trust Fund. In 2005, he also voted for a GOP budget resolution that will raid the Social Security Trust Fund of more than $1.1 trillion over the next five years.
 
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Thu Mar 16, 2006 at 07:57:51 AM EST
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Congressman Mike Ferguson was an avid supporter of the Medicare Part D prescription plan when the bill passed back in 2003 after much arm-twisting by Republican leaders in the House and intentional misstatement of the true costs by the White House.
The implementation of the plan has been disasterous, with many seniors who signed up for plans not being entered in the system and unable to get the drugs their doctors prescribed, "being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines." Throughout the country, participation in the plan is significantly below expectations because of the confusing and often incomprehensible number of plan choices.
On March 10, the Courier-Post reported that the State of New Jersey has stepped in to protect its seniors from being overcharged and denied needed drugs to the tune of $150 million. That's your state tax dollars being used to pay for a federal program that is not working properly, and the federal government is refusing to help out.
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Wed Feb 01, 2006 at 03:59:05 PM EST
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Here's some nice analysis of the State of the Union from Senator Lautenberg's office:Charts released today by United States Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) shows that President George Bush in his five State of the Union addresses wrapped himself in topics that were popular with the American people, but ignored the same issues when public opinion soured.
For example, during his 2004 SOTU speech, President Bush mentioned his plan for a Medicare prescription drug law nine times. Tuesday night President Bush did not mention the new law at all, which took effect on Jan. 1 amid mass confusion.
(two more below the fold)
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