Tag: Privatization

Labor And Medicare

It is just not the GOP that works to undermine the Medicare debate…..labor is not a friend of our seniors either.

I have a long history of defending the labor movement….but that does not extend to union leadership.

I have long been a critic of our so-called labor movement….as a past labor organizer I see the biggest problem as the US labor is more concerned with monetary issues when they should be focused on the political.

I recently saw some disturbing news about the labor issues on Medicare….

“Medicare is a pillar of the healthcare system”

– AFL-CIO June 13, 2022

Such a statement from the AFL-CIO would suggest that labor is determined to protect Medicare and even support improving and expanding it to all Americans. Additionally, President Biden and Democrats regularly criticize Republican threats to reauthorize and voucherize Medicare. Meanwhile, what’s left out of both the Democrat talking points and the AFL-CIO’s 2022 national resolution on healthcare is any acknowledgment that the real threat to Medicare and healthcare today is the decades-long tax-subsidized privatization supported by both major parties.

With major support from organized labor, including AFL-CIO President George Meany at the signing, Medicare was signed into law in 1965. Before Medicare, only 60% of those over 65 had insurance since it was unavailable or unaffordable via private insurance (seniors were charged 3x the rate of younger people). Not only economically beneficial to the working class, the passage of Medicare was a huge civil rights victory as payments to physicians, hospitals, and health care providers were conditional on desegregation.

While a big victory, Medicare did not provide full coverage for all services, and from its inception, there has been a drive to privatize and hand it over to profiteers. In fact, 2022 marks the 50th anniversary (1972) of Medicare permitting private insurance companies (HMOs) to participate in Medicare.

President Clinton finalized HMO participation with Congress in 1997, and in 2003, the Medicare Modernization Act, under President Bush, further boosted privatization. The year 2003 marks the beginning of Medicare Advantage plans: insurance companies essentially masquerading as Medicare.

HMOs and all the other private insurance companies introduced into Medicare after 1997 have not saved the government money, but instead, raised the cost to taxpayers much more than traditional Medicare beneficiaries. In 2005 the Government Accounting Office reported that “It is largely . . . excess payments, not managed care efficiencies, that enable plans to attract beneficiaries by offering a benefits package that is more comprehensive than the one available to FFS beneficiaries, while charging modest or no premiums. Nearly all of the 210 plans in our study received payments in 1998 that exceeded expected FFS costs….”

Labor Leaders Provide Cover for Privatization of Medicare

If the Dems/GOP and Labor have their way then Americans will get screwed (as usual) by those we trust the most.

Just to let my readers know…..

Biden campaigned to expand Medicaid. Now he’s signed a bill to sharply curtail it, ending coverage for millions of people in the middle of a pandemic he pretends is over…

The Social Security administration continues to deny thousands of disability claims a year, in part because it continues to rely on a 45-year-old list of outdated job titles. We live in a System that is eager to help the people who least need it and quick to ignore, chastise and punish the weakest, sickest and poorest among us.

More broken promises that our ‘trusted’ leaders throw out the window once elected.

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The Privatization Of Medicare

Since I can remember the GOP has hated the very idea of Medicare and almost every Congress they have worked tirelessly to try and give the health industry a win by privatizing the program.

Every year since the election of Reagan the foundation of Medicare has been chipped a way….then there is Biden……a president that is heavily invested in the chipping……

A Trump-era pilot program that could result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare in a matter of years is moving ahead under the Biden administration, a development that—despite its potentially massive implications for patients across the U.S.—has received scant attention from the national press or Congress.

a group of physicians from around the nation will try to grab the notice of lawmakers, the Biden White House, and the public by traveling to Washington, D.C. and demanding that the Health and Human Services Department immediately stop the Medicare experiment, which is known as Direct Contracting (DC).

The doctors plan to present HHS with a petition signed by more than 1,500 physicians who believe the DC pilot threatens “the future of Medicare as we know it.”

Advocates have been publicly sounding the alarm about the DC program for months, warning that it could fully hand traditional Medicare over to Wall Street investors and other profit-seekers, resulting in higher costs for patients and lower-quality care.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/11/30/congress-asleep-switch-biden-continues-trump-era-ploy-privatize-medicare

Once again the Democrats prove that they are NO better than the GOP….their concerns are for the donors NOT the people.

Medicare could be lost in the name of ‘compromise’ and word that does more damage than good.

At what point do the American people start paying attention to their future and stop living on social media for instant gratification?

The ONLY answer to getting proper health care for the people of this country is Medicare For All.

Not only is this country being hollowed out but your well-being is in jeopardy….and yet you prefer to see what moron has posted a cat video on Twitter or Instagram or whatever other mindless stupidity is out there.

Until the voter starts truly paying attention then we deserve all the silliness and mindless stupidity we get.

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Medicare Advantage

I try to be an FYI blog when I can…..

First let me say that I am not some old fart trying to sell you the idea that you cannot exist without spending more money to supplement your Medicare.

We see ad after ad these days telling us old farts just how much better life would be it we buying additional insurance policies.

What is ‘Medicare Advantage’?

Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C, makes it possible for people with Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) and Part B (medical insurance) to receive their Medicare benefits in an alternative way. Medicare Advantage plans are offered by private insurance companies contracted with Medicare and provide at least the same level of coverage that Medicare Part A and Part B provide.

Personally I think it is all marketing which means I think it is a scam…..and an end run to try and privatize Medicare totally….

Medicare Advantage is a massive, trillion-dollar rip-off, of the federal government and of taxpayers, and of many of the people buying the so-called Advantage plans.

It’s also one of the most effective ways that insurance companies could try to kill Medicare For All, since about a third of all people who think they’re on Medicare are actually on these privatized plans instead.

Nearly from its beginning, Medicare has allowed private companies to offer plans that essentially compete with it, but they were an obscure corner of the market and didn’t really take off until the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress rolled out the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. This was the GOP’s (and a few corporatist Democrats’) big chance to finally privatize Medicare, albeit one bite at a time.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/08/medicare-advantage-profit-scam-time-end-it

If you are retired and considering a Medicare Advantage policy please read this article and do some deep research before giving your cash away.

Here is a place to start…..https://www.ehealthmedicare.com/medicare-advantage-articles/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-switching-to-a-medicare-advantage-plan/

Please do not be taken in by promises of spending less….there is always hidden caveats….do the hard research before giving your hard fought retirement away.

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Trump Hold-Over Policies

Biden is having to deal with a whole array of policies that are hold-overs from the Trump admin……policies like the border situation……the Afghan peace deal…….etc etc……

For those that depend on Medicare there ism a policy leftover that could further raise your costs when using the program…..

A little-noticed scheme hatched in the late stages of the Trump presidency has consumer advocates and universal healthcare proponents warning about a creeping attempt to further privatize Medicare—an effort the Biden administration is being urged to stop in its tracks.

On December 3, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)—then under the leadership of Seema Verma—unveiled an innocuous-sounding proposal titled the Geographic Direct Contracting Model (Geo) with the purported goal of delivering “Medicare beneficiaries value through better care and improved quality.”

But a look beyond the plan’s technocratic exterior reveals what Center for Health Journalismreporter and editor Trudy Lieberman described earlier this week as a privatization model that could “take root and potentially turn every senior into a customer of a privately-run managed care organization.”

“Perhaps due to the wonky nature of the discussion,” Lieberman added, “the proposed change has generated almost no media coverage although it would upend the health insurance for millions of Americans.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/13/advocates-sound-alarm-over-quiet-trump-era-move-could-further-privatize-medicare

This is something that needs watching and reporting…..the MSM has neglected this in favor of Beyonce, mundane Covid coverage and such mind numbing BS….this issue is important to millions of retired Americans and it should be treated like it is important.

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Blame Privatization

It is absolutely NO mistake about it…I think the idea of privatization is and was a colossus brain fart.

In case anyone doubts my words of condemnation of the idea of privatization…..

https://lobotero.com/2016/06/22/the-history-of-privatization/

https://lobotero.com/2019/06/17/privatization-sucks/

Now that I have filled in a few blanks…..a little personal history…..

in 2005 after Katrina I fell off a ladder a broke my right leg in 4 places—two surgeries and 13 screws and I had my leg back….not mas good as it was but I could walk with a limp…..I was prescribed 2 opioids to help with the pain…morphine and oxycodone…..so I have an interest in the whole opioid abuse thingy that the president and the country is so involved in these days.

Let me say here….Blame Privatization!

The opioid abuse epidemic is one of the worst public-health crises in American history. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1999 and 2017, almost 400,000 people died in the U.S. from an overdose of either prescription or illicit opioids. In 2017 alone, opioids, more than one-third involving prescriptions, killed more than 47,000 individuals. And today, on average 130 people die each day from opioid overdoses.

The root cause of most cases of opioid addiction, particularly prescription-initiated addiction, is pain, a devastating but sometimes overlooked symptom. As a recent American Industrial Hygiene Association paper argues, “the opioid crisis should be seen primarily as a pain crisis, much of which is related to work.” Addressing that crisis precipitated another: treatment regimes that relied heavily on opioids. Today there’s little awareness that almost two decades ago, conservative members of Congress, in a burst of anti-regulatory zeal, championed the fight to eliminate the very ergonomics standard that was designed to reduce the high incidence of a number of common workplace injuries.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/01/how-deregulation-led-opioid-epidemic

Let us be honest!

Privatization and deregulation has caused more problems than it has cured…….and yet the GOP and some Dems keep pushing the for more of both

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Privatization Sucks!

In 1980 with the election of Reagan and the defeat of Carter a new way of running the government came into being…..privatization…..and since it has become the “thing” the country has lost bunches of cash paying these contractors to do the jobs that use to be handled by civil service employees.

When I left the Army I became a civil servant ( not a private contractor) doing the same job that I was doing in the military.

Most jobs in the Defense Department are cheaper with civilian employees as compared to contractors, according to an internal Pentagon report, though the cost comparisons differ based on location, pay grade and job function.

Civil service workers are most likely to be less expensive than contractors performing the same work in the Washington, D.C. region and in the Southeastern United States, the report compiled by the Office of the Secretary of Defense found. More than 75 percent of comparisons in the Southeast the Pentagon ran between government and contract workers showed a higher cost for the private sector, and the capital region was not far behind. Government Executive obtained the never-before reported on document through a Freedom of Information Act request.

https://www.govexec.com/management/2018/12/civilians-are-cheaper-contractors-most-defense-jobs-internal-report-finds/153656/

There has always been waste and fraud in the process of issuing contracts…but it seems to have gotten much worse after privatization…..

I believe that a whole new way of dealing with contractor needs implementing…..ear plugs that are not safe…the Pentagon needs to fine them the total cost of the contract and not allow the company to bid again for 5 years.

But does privatization really work?

According to privatization’s supporters, this shift from public to private management is so profound that it will produce a panoply of significant improvements: boosting the efficiency and quality of remaining government activities, reducing taxes, and shrinking the size of government. In the functions that are privatized, they argue, the profit-seeking behavior of new, private sector managers will undoubtedly lead to cost cutting and greater attention to customer satisfaction.

https://hbr.org/1991/11/does-privatization-serve-the-public-interest

But make up your own mind……https://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/pros-cons-privatizing-government-functions.html

As you may have guessed…I do not think the privatization has produced all the benefits that the Reagan bunch promised in the 1980s.

Just thinking out loud.

Hey! Old Farts! Listen Up!

How long have the Repubs been slobbering all over Medicare with their version of a better idea—-privatization?

For me it was with Reagan and his attempt to privatize the entire government as payback for all the support from the different industries.  Bush1 was no better.  We got a break during the Clinton years…..and then came another Bush2 and the same idea.  Obama years were pretty quite and then 2010 happened and the GOPers in Congress started thumping their chests again…..

And now we have a GOP House….a GOP Senate…..a GOP president and a SCOTUS with NO balls…..

How safe is your Medicare?

Maybe not as safe as you think……

Is Paul Ryan’s years-long dream of gutting Medicare about to come true?

With Republicans set to control both houses of Congress and the White House, Ryan (R-Wis.), who will serve another term as House speaker, “senses his moment,” as Salonobserves.

The Donald Trump transition website states that the administration will “modernize Medicare”—a euphemism, according to Jonathan Cohn and Jeffrey Young at the Huffington Post, that corresponds exactly to what Ryan has in mind.

Speaking Thursday on Fox News‘s “Special Report,” Ryan said, “Medicare is going broke, Medicare is going to have price controls because of Obamacare,” adding, “You have to deal with those issues if you are going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Medicare has serious problems [because of] Obamacare.”

Source: Is Paul Ryan’s Dream of Gutting Medicare About to Come True? | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

How will this battle play out?

Check it out for yourself…….

House Speaker Paul Ryan proposed to privatize the current Medicare system, within the earliest days of the impending Trump administration.

As Members of Congress hastily hash out their opinions and post their announcements, TPM will track what they’re saying, charting whether candidates favor, oppose or release a foggy statement on the privatization and dismantling of Medicare.

The list will be updated as members of Congress release their opinions or figure out how they really feel about Ryan’s proposal.

Source: Your Medicare Phase Out Checklist

Your stupidity at the polls has consequences…….are you happy now?

The History of Privatization

The previous post was about the profits that are being made from the M-IC….but they are not alone….and thanx to privatization many folk are getting rich….

Since the election of Reagan in 1980 I have been bitching about privatization of the government….it has invaded all parts of the government….intel gathering is the most scary for me…..since profits are everything to these contractors….. is it more important than the protection of the people?

I mean even the military is partially privatized…..that alone is another scary idea…..

Privatization is killing this country slowly but slowly….

The post-WWII era was a tough time for conservative economists, academics, intellectuals, and business leaders. Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Securities and Exchange Act, and other New Deal programs represented a dangerous expansion of government’s role in the economy and society – nothing short of a frontal assault on freedom and the beginnings of socialism in the U.S.

Today, after 50 years of attack on government, privatization is a standard conservative response to tight public budgets, a key pillar of attacks on government, and a lucrative market opportunity for domestic and global corporations. Large corporations operate virtually every type of public service including prisons, welfare systems, infrastructure, water and sewer, trash, and schools

Source: The History of Privatization

Another “conservative” program that is biting the country in the ass….again.

 The new war on public schools and teachers

Let’s pull out of the geopolitical hole for awhile….shall we?

I remember a few years back when all the rage was the successes of the Charter Schools…..I said then that it was a con job….what it boiled down to was education by lotto.

The media trotted out the successful charter schools for all the world to see….it was then decided by the media) that this was the cause to highlight….the problem was they gave the public a very narrow view of the situation…..they never reported on the crappy job this did at educating our children….

The sell was a slogan…..”return control of public schools back to the local area”…..it is still being used to convince people of the necessity to privatize public education….of course they will not call it what it is……but rather some cutesy slogan that all can remember and repeat ad nauseum…..

Our kids deserve strong schools and great teachers under local control. That’s what the charter fight is all about…..it is a lie.

Source: Our real charter school nightmare: The new war on public schools and teachers – Salon.com

If this is an issue that will be on the ballot in your area…..then please learn everything you can about charter schools or whatever slogan they are using to get you to vote for the privatization of your public schools…..do not let them kill public education……it is a fundamental right of our republic…..do not let it go the way of your voting rights…….or abortion rights.

A Blackwater World Order | The American Conservative

I am sure that I have been vocal enough that my readers realize that I think that privatization of the government is a con job…….especially when it comes to fight wars or guarding diplomats…….one of my pet peeves is that of Blackwater (I believe they want to call themselves “XE” these days)……it is NOT in the countries best interest to have a private army….to me it iS NO better than the hated militias in the Middle East…..

Did anyone see “7 Days in May”?  If not, may I suggest you watch it and then tell me what you think of a private army operating within the US.

Yes, I know this article is from American Conservative”….get over it!  There are some good writing going on, especially this article……

Read and offer up an opinion……

A Blackwater World Order | The American Conservative.