Tuesday, May 27, 2008

 

CORRUPTING MEDICARE

There has long been a myth about government and private enterprise. This myth no doubt originated with private businesses which wanted to do work then done by government employees. These business firms needed a leg up from the media and the public, because their argument was weak.

So they started the myth that private business is more efficient than government agencies. It has been perpetuated by some of these same interests and by the political party that represents them. Unfortunately, some governmental agencies provided some bad examples as well.

Having had 25 years managing a public institution, I must say that the most efficient entities which whom we dealt were those of the State of Oklahoma. For a long while federal agencies were second, and private contractors and vendors were third. Later the scales tipped to give private business an edge over federal agencies, and state agencies suffered with political tampering.

We dealt with some very reliable and efficient private businesses, but we also dealt with some bad ones. The profit motive often undermines both quality and reliability. Vigilance is necessary. Crazy as it may seem, the unreliable private contractor often has the law on his side when it comes to enforcing performance. Their lobbyists have shaped amendments to law.

The reasons why a private business might be more efficient would be: (1) absence of regulations and red tape; (2) paying their workers lower rates and/or fewer benefits; (3) better management; (4) absence of worker protections (health, job security, etc.) ; or (5) special technical expertise.

Even with such advantages, it has not proven to work out just that way. A well-run state agency, or a well-run federal agency, may be more efficient. Sometimes out-sourcing of specific tasks or operations may prove effective.

Congresses of the first Bush term sought to “improve” the Medicare program. They offered a confusing prescription drug benefit to seniors in order to get a movement started to privatize the program. At the same time the pharmaceutical companies, always a lucrative source of political contributions, was handed a giveaway of billions of Medicare dollars.

The prescription program brought dozens of insurance companies into play with different benefits, confusing seniors. The law prohibits bidding or negotiating prices, unheard of in legal circles. It prohibits re-importation of the same drugs in the same packages at cheaper prices prevalent abroad.

Another Bush privatization initiative has been launched – the Medicare Advantage program. Read carefully, or you will not believe this program.

It authorizes private insurance companies to enroll Medicare people, paying them an incentive to do so. Those “incentives” have been turned into lucrative signing bonuses for unscrupulous salespersons. They prey upon seniors, lying to pick up quick bonuses. Seniors are promised lower premiums and deductibles, but give up freedom of providers.

It is estimated this highly touted private program will cost the Medicare fund an extra $50 billion from 2009 to 2012. Medicare now pays these companies 13% more for the same medical procedures as under regular Medicare. Further, the subsidies cost an added 17% over the regular costs of administering traditional Medicare.

All of us who are on regular Medicare are seeing our premiums increase, and our fund robbed to support this deviant, more expensive privatized program. The federal government has legalized exploitation of seniors for benefit of private business.

It is a tragedy when a good government program, which meets the needs of the people, is politicized and privatized for the benefit of big business.

Even more reprehensible will be the blame game that will be played out, calling Medicare inefficient and terming it to be socialized medicine. As the Medicare fund gets into more trouble, we will hear all these things from the hypocrites who have tried to sabotage the program with privatization.


Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Saturday, May 17, 2008

 

HOISTED ON THE HORNS

The failure of the Oklahoma state legislature to adequately fund government services has resulted in some bizarre happenings. We have a state staff person about to be sentenced to jail because he did not do what a judge ordered, even though he could not do it because of the failure of the legislature to provide money for facilities to do it.

Sound crazy? Absolutely! But this is the situation that our tax-cutting, program-starving legislature has put us into.

The Office of Juvenile Affairs has repeatedly requested funds for the expansion of holding and treatment facilities. The Oklahoma county juvenile detention center is crowded 10% beyond bed capacity, because the state has no room to move juvenile inmates into treatment oriented facilities.

An Oklahoma County judge ordered the director of juvenile justice to take them anyway -- NOW. The director has no place to put them either, and says it would be unfair to the rest of the state to use all coming vacancies to take Oklahoma City offenders in front of others. So, the county judge is holding him in contempt of a court order.

That poor public administrator is indeed hoisted on the horns of a dilemma.

Oklahoma voters are demonstrating short-sightedness, if not plain ignorance, in voting time after time for those legislators who promise tax cuts. Legislators should be in a position to know that they cannot run adequate state services without sufficient tax money. This makes most of them into whatever name category that is the opposite of honest statespersons.

Oklahoma has one of the lowest tax burdens in the country. Anyone who says different is not truthful.

Further, the only reason Oklahoma can even survive as a state with the current level of revenues generated by its individual and corporate taxpayers and highway users is because it has become flush with oil and gas severance (well-head) taxes. These have, of course, increased along with the prices of both oil and natural gas.

Our ordinary tax paying citizens and corporations have had an easy ride – compared to those in most other states. As usual, Oklahoma is living off its minerals during a boom, and it is doing nothing for its infrastructure with that volatile splash of income.

Our legislature has repeatedly cut taxes over the last few years. At the same time those same legislators have added billions to the state debt, to be paid from future revenue. Future funds will be inadequate because of failure to enact taxes specific to the debt, as the constitution requires, and tax-cutting will produce insufficient general funds to maintain services -- much less pay off past debt.

Oklahoma has the lowest total tax burden of any state in the country -- federal, state, and local. Ours is 27.8% compared with the national average of 32.7%. In STATE taxes, Oklahoma is 49th with sales 4.5%, gasoline 17 cents, beer 40 cents a gallon, and cigarettes $1.03.

Only seven states do not have income taxes, but one would not know that by listening to politicians and news media. Only five states, all different from the seven just mentioned, do not have state sales tax. That is the reality. We don’t have to eliminate or cut taxes to be competitive.

Oklahoma’s gasoline taxes are 18.4 cents federal and 17 cents state, for a total of 35.4 cents. This is more than 10 cents below the national average.

If an old rule of thumb still applies, then Oklahoma could have about $250 million in new funds for highways and bridges by charging the national average in gas taxes. Just charging a gas tax at the level of surrounding states should bring in $125 million more a year. (Newer methods for estimates may show more.)

Instead of acting fiscally responsible, there is talk at the Capitol of issuing highway bonds and robbing schools to pay for them. No wonder those who are concerned about education funding are raising a fuss!

Heaven, save the State of Oklahoma from the tax-cutters!


Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Friday, May 09, 2008

 

HANG THE TAX-CUTTERS

“Hang the tax-cutters!” “Throw the rascals out!”

Such should be the election year slogans of all knowledgeable voting citizens who care about the quality of state and local government services.

While the most vigorous and mean tax-cutters are within the leadership group of one political party, there are those frightened sycophants in the other party who are afraid to stand up and be statesmanlike in the face of the evils of tax-cutting. Too often they just go along.

“Nail the tax-dodgers!”

This, too, would be an appropriate election year slogan for those who are informed about how much and how many special interests are exempt from taxes – both state and local, or property and sales.

The unneeded give-away of $30 million in state tax exemptions for the multi-millionaire owners of the new Oklahoma City basketball team is the latest example of squandering by legislators of both parties. The sales tax holiday is another. There are numerous other examples of such in the name of “quality jobs.”

Tax breaks for oil and gas companies to encourage new or deeper drilling are a sham, suspected of being bought and paid for with campaign donations. Who’s hurt? State services suffer.

Millions of dollars are unavailable to schools, as well as financially strapped city and county governments, because of property tax exemptions for as much as 15 years for new or expanded business facilities. Again, this is in the name of jobs or economic development. Few even question these.

Jobs and economic development have become the sacred cows of state politics.

Cutting individual income tax rates, reducing corporate rates, and abolishing inheritance taxes on huge estates have hurt every consumer of state services. The benefits go to a relative few.

Unable to find “the fat in the state budget” as advertised in past campaigns, the republicans at the state level appear to have adopted their national posture of “cut taxes, borrow, and spend.”

Failure to enact gasoline and diesel taxes to keep up with surrounding states has caused Oklahoma to adopt a dangerous, and constitutionally questionable, practice of borrowing for highway dollars and paying them back with interest from regular income later. Highway backers now want to take money away from schools, because we are way behind.

Further, the legislature has put the state into billions of dollars of debt by failure to fund state and college building bonds by enacting a special tax for payback as the constitution requires. They are now floating bonds for matching donated endowed chair funds, primarily for OU and OSU, by taking away dedicated funding for their own OHLAP student scholarship program benefiting students of all colleges.

The legislature shucked its responsibility for student fees, letting regents raise these exorbitantly to compensate for failure to fund colleges. Thus, the legislature is secretly taxing families of college kids.

Debt obligations against future income are growing, removing an increasing amount of current income as a budget source.

The legislature plays hypocritical games with the penal system – enacting strict laws and sentencing rules while ignoring the consequences in terms of numbers and costs of incarceration. Unfunded debt is used to expand the system, or more private contract prisons are brought into use at added budget expense.

By failing to properly fund the state’s education and other retirement funds on a pay as you go basis, the legislature has allowed the state to accumulate liability that will take twenty years or more to pay off. These, plus the unfunded bonds enacted upon legislative whim, will end up destroying the credit rating of the state and make borrowing more expensive.

Orphans and children from broken and hazardous homes are being warehoused in overflowing facilities because money has not been provided for more foster home care. Juvenile offender detention centers are over-populated and dangerous places. Basic home health care for the elderly is not being funded, causing removal of some elderly ill to nursing homes at more than twice the cost.

Our legislature has performed with all the fiscal restraint of a drunken sailor on shore leave, or a college kid with no credit card limit. They run up debt without increasing income. (Perhaps this comparison denigrates the college kids and my former navy shipmates.)

Surely voters can recognize that the major fiscal problems that Oklahoma state and local governments face result from: (1) the unwillingness of its own citizens, corporate and individual, to pay taxes to support quality, even necessary, public services; and (2) the willingness of spineless legislators to assertively do the bidding of the their most selfish and least publicly responsible constituents.

On the other hand, it could be worse. What if it were just ignorance and stupidity?


Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Monday, May 05, 2008

 

A FINE MESS

It was in the old Laurel and Hardy series of 1930’s era movies that the phrase was often muttered at the end of some misadventure, “A fine mess you got us into, Ollie.” Of course, most of the bad stuff had happened to Oliver Hardy, while the divine klutz, Stan Laurel, had bumbled his way into and through the incident.

At this point in the presidential race, the Militant Moderate is prone to want to address the electorate, and the core leadership of both political parties, with that comment, “A fine mess you’ve gotten us into!”

We are left with three candidates in the race. From conversations with friends and acquaintances, as well as polls, all of these are unacceptable to a sizeable segment of the electorate.

Some Democrat friends tell me they will not now vote for Obama if he is the party candidate. Hillary has had a standing disapproval rating in the past of some 35% or 40%. Huge numbers of Republicans are threatening to bolt their party, and stay home or vote for Hillary.

It looks as though this election is shaping up to be one for perception as the “lesser of the evils.” If it carries through that way, then the previously unlikely scenario of the “moderate” Hillary as the November winner could happen – if her surge is not too late.

To support such a conclusion, one must look closely at the reasons for negativity toward each candidate, as well as its strength. This is why we pick Hillary.

Hillary has the higher level of negative numbers, but for shallow reasons. Further, her stronger negative ratings come from Republicans.

Since the preacher eruption linking Obama to the “angry black man” image, his negative numbers have been increasing. More questions arise, “Do we really know him just yet?” Now, sizeable numbers are saying, “I won’t vote if he is the candidate.”

McCain has successfully tied himself the most unpopular president in modern history. Although he seems desirous of separating himself, he still continues to support the same lame policies and decisions on the war, the tax system, the economy. social security, health insurance, etc.

McCain is unwanted by many in his own party. His nice guy image is being dissolved by his own rough style of speaking. His reputation for coziness with lobbyists is public. The compatibility of his temperament and control of the push-buttons of war is questioned. His hawkish manner is scary.

McCain is thought not to be a genuine conservative, but he has taken on all the odoriferous baggage of that wing of the party.

What happens in the fall is still to be determined, of course. Will democrats with strong negative feelings toward Obama, go out to vote against McCain if Obama is the candidate? Will those negative toward Hillary go out to support her, if she is the candidate? The latter appears more likely.

A big question is the effects of the negative campaigning, already raising finances and waiting in the wings to come on center stage for McCain. If a “swift-boat” type blitz hits, as expected, Obama appears to be the least likely of the two democrats to successfully weather that storm.

Thus, if Obama is the democratic candidate, McCain is the likely winner in the fall, regardless of his and his party’s negatives. If by unlikely chance Hillary wins the nomination, then she is the probable winner in the fall. Since she is still the underdog, Democrat success in the fall seems unlikely.

“A fine mess you have gotten us into!” seems an appropriate comment.


Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

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