|
|
|
Issues
Carter Wrenn posted on July 05, 2012 13:14
When Dr. Craigon Gray headed Medicaid in North Carolina he didn’t care much for home health care – he would tell anyone who’d listen how home health care was riddled with fraud.
Now a lot of folks suspected Dr. Gray’s animus towards home care (and his preference for sending elderly people to nursing homes) had something to do with his boss, Secretary Lanier Cansler, having been a lobbyist for nursing homes. But Dr. Gray just kept right on hammering away about the fraud in home care and, eventually, a lot of folks – including legislators – got to thinking he might be right.
Well, two years ago, Dr. Gray hired a company from Maine – Public Consulting Group – to root out all the fraud in home health care. The firm worked for 21 months and recovered $183,000 the state had spent due to fraud – so, in the end, the fraud was less than a fraction of 1% of the $300 million the state had spent.
That was good news. But there was a catch: Dr. Gray had paid the Maine company a fee of $250,000 a month, plus a commission of $378,000 – a total of $5.6 million.
In all, from all the different Medicaid programs the Maine Company audited, the state recovered a total of $3.6 million it had spent due to fraud.
The bottom line: The state spent $3.6 million due to fraud, then Dr. Gray spent $5.6 million to get the money back, and the state ended up $1.8 deeper in the hole.
And that’s how government works.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on July 05, 2012 07:51
Will Republicans now make the same mistake on health care reform that President Obama made?
Apart from never adequately explaining his reform, the President hurt himself by focusing on health care when Americans were focused on the bad economy.
Now a poll shows that, however they feel about the law, Americans want to move on. The poll found that 56 percent want to “move on to other national issues” rather than “continue to block the law from being implemented.”
If Obama is lucky, Republicans will indulge their obsession with “Obamacare” while he runs away with the economy – and the election.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on July 04, 2012 07:49
To celebrate Independence Day, Congress should oblige those patriots who attended the “Hands off My Healthcare” rally in Raleigh this weekend: Pass a law making them ineligible – now and in the future – for Medicare. And give them medals for their sacrifice.
Oh, that’s not what they meant?
No, they want government to keep giving them health care. But not anybody else. And they want other people to keep paying for their health care. They just don’t want to pay for anybody else’s.
As one wise soul said: “Americans want the very best health care that somebody else will pay for.”
And don’t try taking any goodies away from us.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Posted in: General, Issues
Gary Pearce posted on July 02, 2012 11:15
Speaker Thom Tillis says Republicans “own the economy” and is optimistic: “I think we are seeing some green shoots.”
But Pat McCrory says Governor Perdue owns the economy and it’s “broken.”
Nationally, of course, Republicans say President Obama owns the economy and it sucks.
Obama avoids sounding too optimistic. Democrats say it’s broken because Republican policies broke it.
Two ladies interviewed by the N&O's John Frank in Pinetops apparently agreed it sucks. They used a word “not fit to print.” Unemployment there is nearly 14 percent.
Maybe they’re in the wrong place. The journal of capitalism, Forbes, says four of America’s top cites for business and careers are in North Carolina: Raleigh, Durham, Asheville and Charlotte.
Senator Bob Rucho says Republican tax cuts will work because: “…everywhere you go you find if you put money back into the economy, you are going to find economic growth.”
But Greg Bethea, the Pinetops town administrator, says his community is feeling only the cuts in the Republican budget – in the schools, a youth development center and rural development.
“We certainly understand they have to make cuts, but when you do it in an area that is so important to the viability of a community ... that’s real to us. That’s not theoretical,” he said.
Maybe people in Raleigh should get out more.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on June 29, 2012 10:51
As an aspiring geezer, I’m inspired when white-hairs beat the young guns at their own new-media game.
So today we celebrate Lyle Denniston, the 81-year-old, twice-retired blogger at SCOTUSBlog. He got the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act right and he got it first.
Actually, the trigger-happy hot heads at CNN and Fox News got it first. But they got it wrong. They reported that the court struck down the law. Oops. They even had President Obama fooled, until he heard from his staff and from SCOTUSblog.
Denniston’s scoop made him an Internet sensation. #TeamLyle T-shirts popped up.
He knows his subject. He has covered the court for 54 years, working with various newspapers before the blog.
Geezers may not be as fast on the draw as the young guns. But our aim is true.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Posted in: General, Issues
Gary Pearce posted on June 26, 2012 11:14
Right now President Obama is like a patient waiting for the doctor to bring back the test results. And the signs aren’t good.
In fact, it looks like the Supreme Court is going to give his health-care reform a death sentence on Thursday. Talk about “death panels.”
There are three ways this will be a serious blow.
First, Americans don’t understand what’s in Obama’s plan. For all his oratorical skill, Obama hasn’t persuaded voters that he passed something good for them.
Second, they don’t know what’s in it, but they know they don’t like it. Obama lost that battle long ago.
Third, if the Court rules against him, Obama looks ineffectual. If you look ineffectual, you don’t look like a strong President. If you don’t look like a strong President, people don’t think you can fix the economy. If people don’t think you can fix the economy, you lose the election.
And all this over a provision – the individual mandate – that Obama opposed as a candidate.
Talk about losing control of the narrative.
Maybe Team Obama has a miracle cure and he’ll recover. But, today, the prognosis isn’t good.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on June 23, 2012 10:09
An AP story captured Democrats’ dilemma this election. It summarized where Mitt Romney and President Obama stand on the economy this way:
“On planet Republican: The economy is backsliding, and the president is to blame. His stimulus spending did more harm than good, and his big-government rules are strangling businesses. The answer is repealing health care, energy and financial regulations and cutting taxes. That should spark investment and create jobs. Tackling the deficit requires huge spending cuts, just not at the Pentagon. The unsustainable guarantee of Medicare and Medicaid must change.
“In the Democratic universe: The economy's slowly improving, thanks to government spending that helped fend off a depression. Another dose of targeted spending will help. Republican policies in the Bush administration - cutting taxes and eliminating rules - brought on the financial crisis and budget deficits. The rich should help dig us out by paying higher taxes. The Pentagon's budget must be cut, but entitlement spending can be controlled without drastically altering the social safety net.”
Boiled down, the Republican answer is cut spending and taxes. The Democratic answer sounds like more spending and taxes.
When the average American is no better off today than 20 years ago, spending and taxes is a loser.
President Obama, Walter Dalton and all Democrats have to find a better way to frame this choice.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on June 22, 2012 10:06
This week I spoke to the Association of Government Information Officers in Raleigh. About 25 people were there (all but three were women, by the way; the reverse from when I was in government over 30 years ago).
I asked two questions. First, how many think your agency (most all are in state government) is held in high regard by the public? About five hands went up. Then, how many thank your agency is held in high regard by the politicians who control its budget? Maybe three hands, and those were tentative.
In other words, people hate government today.
Why? One answer is the media. First are the cutbacks in traditional media, like the N&O. The result is less coverage of government’s routine business and more focus on things that go wrong (see Medicaid and Lettergate.) Then there is the rise of new media – from Fox News to this blog. And the focus there also tends to be: government can’t do anything right; it just wastes your money.
No wonder people are so negative. And no doubt there are problems. Like DHHS has spending years and millions of dollars pursuing a Medicaid system that uses COBOL. COBOL? Why not just do everything in Latin on stone tablets?
Not all the news is bad: Someone from DPI said that North Carolina’s dropout rate has steadily been going down. But polls show most people think the opposite is the true.
Americans have a great tradition of being suspicious of government. But what about the tradition of getting the facts before making up our minds?
Today, we make up our minds, then find the facts that fit.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on June 21, 2012 16:23
Walter Dalton beat Bill Faison like a drum in the Democratic primary. But Dalton could learn something from Faison’s ability to boil down an issue – and an attack – to its essence. Or, as one old Southern politician said, “he gets the hay down where the goats can reach it.”
Example is Faison’s tweet today on the budget:
“I voted against the budget in the #ncga the budget does nothing to solve unemployment and does not support people or education.”
That’s the way you do it.
[Click to read and post comments...]
Gary Pearce posted on June 21, 2012 08:42
Republicans are determined to define themselves as hard-hearted – and hypocritical.
They give two explanations for cutting out $10 million to compensate people who were forcibly sterilized by the state.
The first is: We can’ afford it. Let’s figure here. The budget is $20 billion. $200 million is 1 percent of that. So $10 million is one-half of one-tenth of a percent of the budget.
The other explanation came from Senator Don East: "You just can't rewrite history. It was a sorry time in this country. I'm so sorry it happened, but throwing money don't (sic) change it, don't make it go away. It still happened."
Well, we do have a precedent in America for compensating victims. It’s called the civil courts, where you can sue for damages when you’ve been hurt or wronged. And North Carolina once had, and maybe still does, a fund to compensate crime victims. The wrong still happened, the money don’t change it and don’t make it go away, but we do “throw money” at wrong.
In the end, the Republicans can’t escape the perception that they cut the money because it would go to the kind of people who don’t vote for them.
Then there’s the hypocrisy. Fox News commentators rail endlessly about how President Obama is trying to take away our freedoms as Americans. North Carolina took away a significant amount of these Americans’ freedoms. Wasn’t that wrong, and isn’t $10 million a reasonable effort to right a wrong?
Thom Tillis thinks so.
[Click to read and post comments...]
|
|
|