Stopdown

Stopdown: Hearsay

Below are comments collected from interviews with every day people and professionals in an area, e.g. doctors, about what they find wrong with local, state and federal government. Some of the following text is our editorializing, and in some instances we cite content of articles that are pertinent. But basically the following comments have been distilled from discussions with individuals.

Welfare for the rich and those with connections constitutes a huge disease of our economy and morale. It is the essence of corruption. Welfare for the poor is a drop in the bucket by comparison. It is more than money, it is control of the way we live. Listening to the radio or watching TV, taking a cab ride, living in public housing or near a government housing project, running a family farm, obtaining prescription drugs are examples of how consumers and small businesses get a bad result so that corporations and fat cats can rake it in via arrangements with government.

National Public Radio recently joined with the corporate media to scuttle an FCC program to create small community stations around the U.S. .....TV ads are seriously louder than programs. The FCC's dubious excuse is that "sound density" not higher decibels makes ads seem louder..... Likewise the gun lobby (NRA) has persuaded most state legislatures to shield shooting ranges from legal complaints about the noise they generate. ...Lotteries should have lots of smaller payouts: a million, a hundred thousand, ten thousand. Wouldn't that be fun? Hundreds of people could get big payoffs where now only one payout occurs. But we can't have fun with our own "education" money. Is it for higher tax revenues that they make the big payments? We seek explanation......Welfare for the rich and corporations include farm subsidies that go mainly to big "agribusiness" farms, helping them wipe out small farmers in the third world and in the U.S., even though the subsidies were supposed to help small farmers. Another welfare trough is corrupt military spending that gets us less "bang for the buck," (and could easily be busted with stings).......Housing projects built in the 60's turned poor neighborhoods into much worse nightmares of crime and violence while stuffing the pockets of developers, contractors, corrupt union bosses and consultants (yes, they've stopped building the big projects, but the same crowd is still in control, peddling the pork and taking the payoff)..... The IRS is overworked, it says. But as even major media have pointed out, the IRS spends its energy chasing down small fry -- middle class transgressors........ And then there are formatted tax dodges offered by investment corporations. The big tax dodges are transparently nothing but tax dodges, and the IRS can shut them down legally simply on that basis, but they don't. (For an example click here) "Consulting fees" for lobbyists are not for their expertise in the interface between law and business, but for their personal connections to lawmakers and administration. This is a a web of corruption that includes Indian tribes with casinos paying millions to lobbyists and party coffers to keep other Indian tribes from getting Casino's in their area..... Taxi bureaus in a given city let the taxi companies make big payouts to the permit ("medallion") holders at the expense of drivers and the riding public. This would be called racketeering except it is done by the government. We could have low fares, drivers staying busy and making much more money, beautiful cabs and prompt dispatch if taxis operated like a business rather than an extortion racket (with the permit holders extorting legally.) The monopoly, a limitation on permits, should be kept, so the drivers can make money, as was the original intent of limiting the permits. A ceiling on payments to the permit holders would stop the extortion from ruining the business....... Boards of education, housing authorities, public works (e.g. road repair) etc. are money troughs for those with the right connections. We will build a file with details and are asking for comments from readers. .....The U.S. Army subtracts the amount of disability payments to a disabled ex-soldier from the amount of his/her pension.

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Below: More commentary drawn from various sources.

Medical economics

Medicare drug benefits... Unlike Medicaid recipients, who have their prescription drugs paid for, Medicare recipients have always had to pay for their own, unless they are in the hospital. Unlike Medicaid recipients, who are receiving medical welfare, Medicare recipients have paid into the program their whole working life in what is a sort of side-car to Social Security. If they are poor in retirement they're out of luck. A new law has been passed, offering slight relief somewhere down the road, but mostly creating confusion around the various plans. "The people they sent to explain it to us don't understand it," commented one senior speaking of the drug benefits cards being offered. It is not pretty to see politicians acting as if they are doing right by seniors with these too-little and too-late measures. Clearly coverage of medication is something that belonged in Medicare from the beginning, and why it didn't happen is a story we would like to investigate.

Originally the cost of drugs was not so high, but as the cost of prescriptions rose over the decades since Medicare was started, in 1967, the pharmaceutical companies lobbied Congress not to provide coverage. One might think the drug makers would be happy to have the government pay for drugs that seniors would often not be able to pay for otherwise. The fear of pharmaceutical companies has been that price controls will be imposed in the Medicare accounts, and then price controls will spread to the larger market. So people who have paid into this program their whole working lives have to make a choice between nourishing food and medicine. And now that the same politicians (Democrats approximately as guilt as Republicans) who sold out seniors for years have offered a meager, half-baked sell-out as a remedy, who endorses it? -- the AARP! (the American Association of Retired People) Like the labor union executives whose real allegiance is to the avenues of corruption and their own salary, the AARP brass have shown us they don't care about seniors, they care about the elite power structure. If they cared about seniors they would have been fighting all along for a drug benefit that pays for drugs without the high deductibles built into the new bill.

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Medicare barely pursues fraud in hospital and doctor bills. Until the 1990's they did not pursue fraud on bills at all. In this they were hand in hand with the private fee for service insurers, who never pursued fraud on bills. Even when patients complained neither Medicare nor private insurers went after fraud. Some individuals say the private insurers actually attacked them when they complained vigorously, including damaging the patient's credit. And yet the HMO's -- i.e. the insurance companies -- took over medicine in the name of cost containment, the very thing they had steadfastly refused to uphold as fee-for-service insurers.

It is important to note that when Hillary Clinton tried to rally the nation to the cause of cost containment, ('93-4) neither she nor the media addressed the issue of the fraud on our bills, which would seem like a good place to start. This fraud comes in two forms: (1) Outright fraud, that is billing for something that never happened, such as a billing for a test that was never performed or billing for a "doctor visit" when a nurse administers a shot. One older lady told us that she was told she was sleeping when a procedure was performed that she had questioned. She did manage to get that charge refunded. An office worker at a surgery clinic told us that false charges are programmed into to the computer. (2) And then there is "cost shifting," whereby a paper hospital gown may cost $50 or an aspirin $5. This must happen, we are told, so that other hospital costs like non-paying patients can be covered by the accounting process. But it clearly doesn't have to be done like this. The bills could state what the other costs are, and let the patient see the truth, rather say a tongue depressor costs $5 when the hospital pays a penny for it. This is a kind of fraud, as is the coded language describing charges that patients cannot understand, which is a deliberate obfuscation deliberately resisting reform. One may be sure the AARP, the AMA, Medicare, Health and Human Services etc. is not going to do anything about it.

And, similarly, Ms. Clinton carried on about universal coverage without mentioning that around the country hospitals and clinics that serve the poor were being shutdown -- a trend that has continued since that time. The media managed to overlook it also.

Here is an example of cost-containment as practiced by HMO's.....A doctor (from England) told us about going to an emergency room at a hospital with a good reputation in the San Francisco area. He had a rash on his leg which he thought was a type of dermatitis that can be dangerous. When the staff took his temperature they found it to be normal, prompting him to ask that they try another thermometer and run a check on that one, because his other symptoms were such that he found it hard to believe a normal temperature reading. He explained that he was a doctor. After more than half an hour went by and his rash grew in size he got someone's attention and reminded them of his situation. The staff took his temperature again with the same thermometer and told him again that he had no fever. He again pressed his claim that the thermometer was malfunctioning and again was ignored for half an hour, at which point he began to be afraid he could lose his life to this idiocy. Finally he got them to try another thermometer which showed he had a serious fever and the diagnosis (dermatitis cellulitis (?)) was made and an antibiotic given which cleared up the problem. He got the bill a few days later, $900. He protested and the hospital threatened to sue. When he recounted this incident he was in a negotiation to lower the bill.

Nothing has been done to stop the billing fraud, and the arrogance that attends it, under HMO's. What HMO's have done is cut services and put the money they save in their pockets.

There is much more to discuss about HMO's -- such as the way they have escaped liability for malpractice thanks to a benefits-related clause in the ERISA law, a federal law pertaining to retirement programs. This law should be rewritten because it provides corporate immunity where there should be no immunity. If the HMO's, to save money, refuse treatment that doctors recommend, then they should be held liable if a medical tragedy results. Likewise employers should be held liable, criminally and in civil court, for cutting costs in a way that knowingly risks worker death or injury. But here as well special laws have been cooked up by congress to limit employer liability.

Medicaid fraud is a rampant industry. A scandal involving outlets for home-care medical devices in California, and another scandal involving drop-in senior health care centers in the South, show how an actual scam industry forms up, with many operators running the same kind of scam. In California they were billing for phony cases. Medicaid was paying for homecare devices for non-existent patients.

In the South (Southeast) seniors were sent to play bingo while the centers billed the government for therapy. These operations, given the publicity, may have shut down. Or maybe the government, now that the disturbance is over, is looking the other way again. And, of course, there is all the fraud going on that is not yet exposed and never will be exposed.

HUD and Local Housing Authorities

Housing projects built in the sixties in U.S. cities created conditions much worse that any slum, in terms of violence, isolation, and horror for children. Packing the poorest of the poor into these jail-like places, where the police are afraid to go, was a very expensive indertaking. The local construction companies, unions and corrupt urban housing authority officials, and organized crime raked in the money to destroy neighborhoods in this way. Crumbs from the table of the fat cats in Washington. What would have made sense from the beginning would have been to rebuild neighborhoods, to help people with jobs and families buy houses. But corrupt money ruled and urban mayhem won out, while African American leadership failed to turn the energies of the civil rights movement against the housing project scam....Although HUD now builds little units and mixed income units now, it is the same sleazy crowd raking in the money because they still direct the "pork barrel" process, that is they are still handing out the construction jobs for kickbacks. Andrew Cuomo did nothing to stop this cesspool from being what it is. Cisneros tried to let all HUD money recipients receive a voucher that they could take where they want. But that idea, which would empower the poor and make government rental housing compete with private rental housing. was tossed out along with Cisneros. (The pork-barrel crowd dug up a minor indiscretion on Cisneros part and used it to remove him, lest he move ahead with his plan to derail corruption.)..........A question we would like to explore is, what happens now with section-8 vouchers, do people get to take them to any private landlord who will take the voucher, or are the vouchers only good at certain addresses designated by housing authorities? What % of people can get these limited vouchers. What % of people get vouchers they can take anywhere?

$650 million in U.S. dollars was found in by U.S. soldiers in residences of Saddam Hussein's inner circle after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces. The investigation has put the blame on few underlings, just as was done when $300 million was found to have gone to Saddam Hussein before "Desert Storm" (1990) A New York Times article describes the investigation of the laundering of the $650 million in bland terms, as if the fines levied settle the matter reasonably. Click here for article. We would greatly appreciate hearing from readers about the $300 million, which went to Saddam through an Atlanta branch of an Italian Bank, and about the $650 million -- and, in both cases, about the U.S. government's failure to pursue justice, and the media's failure to dig into these matters. With regard to the $300 million, we would like to say that William Safire in his New York Times column complained, for a while, about the media letting this matter drift quietly out of sight. ......It should be noted that more recently in Iraq, accountants have said that hundreds of millions of dollars are washing around without any competent controls, and that the degree of waste through fraud is huge.