DL Open Thread: Thursday, March 23, 2023
JOE BIDEN VS. Carney/DeMatteis/Geisenberger. The topic?: Medicare Advantage:
The multimillion dollar ad buy is part of an aggressive campaign by the health insurance industry and its allies to stop the Biden proposal. It would significantly lower payments — by billions of dollars a year — to Medicare Advantage, the private plans that now cover about half of the government’s health program for older Americans.
The change in payment formulas is an effort, Biden administration officials say, to tackle widespread abuses and fraud in the increasingly popular private program. In the last decade, reams of evidence uncovered in lawsuits and audits revealed systematic overbilling of the government. A final decision on the payments is expected shortly, and is one of a series of tough new rules aimed at reining in the industry. The changes fit into a broader effort by the White House to shore up the Medicare trust fund.
Just imagine if all the millions the insurance companies spent on ads were spent on, you know, health care.
The secretary (Geisenberger) added that while he agreed with “two-thirds” of Ms. Graham’s presentation, he did not agree with the section regarding alternative solutions to the liability because of the committee’s endorsement of the plan last year.
“The committee understood that there are three approaches to this and if you address all three, it becomes much easier to get there: eligibility, funding and design,” he said.
“Design changes done over time and not a silver bullet, but done over time, are going to be critical to try and bring down this long-term liability and can lead to the long-term sustainability of these benefits for everyone.”
Translation: Without the denial of benefits that makes Medicare Advantage so profitable for the health insurance companies, ‘we’ can’t balance our books. Of course, the Carney Cult ignores this apparent bug in their argument:
During the presentation, Ms. Graham pushed back on previous claims made by the state; specifically, the notion that active employees subsidize healthcare costs for state pensioners.
Several graphs and charts outlined the fiscal impact on Delaware’s Group Health Insurance Plan (GHIP) from active state employees, pre-Medicare retirees and Medicare retirees for Fiscal Year 2022.
Including medical and prescription claims, as well as operational expenses, the data showed that Medicare retirees have the least expensive impact on the GHIP with an average of $4,626 per individual.
Non-Medicare retirees were shown to have an average cost of $17,484 to the GHIP, while active employees averaged a cost of $16,495 per person.
Funding each group has resulted in a $48.5 million deficit for active state employees and a $29.7 million deficit for non-Medicare retirees according to the data. Medicare retirees were the only group in the green, with a surplus of nearly $25.6 million.
Oh. We have met the enemy, and it is/are Carney, DeMatteis and Geisenberger.
Disney To DeSantis: Fuck You. Yes, they’re a soulless corporation. Still:
The Walt Disney Co. will host a major conference promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the workplace in Central Florida this September, gathering executives and professionals from the world’s largest companies in a defiant display of the limits of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against diversity training.
Disney has had a longstanding relationship with Out & Equal, the organization behind the event, and is listed on its website as one of its most generous sponsors.
The Florida resort has committed to hosting the conference this year and next, which will coincide with the presidential election campaign in 2024. DeSantis is widely expected to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
Dozens of iconic American companies — including Apple, McDonald’s, Uber, Walmart, Hilton, Amazon, Boeing, Cracker Barrel and John Deere — are sponsoring the Out & Equal Workplace summit, which over 5,000 people are expected to attend. Several agencies, including the State Department and the CIA, are listed as government partners and will have booths at the conference.
Rethug Attack-Dog Jamie Comer: Just Another Woman-Beating Bastard. A woman-beater who paid for his girlfriend’s abortion:
Joseph Gerth of the Louisville Courier-Journal has an article on Republican Congressman Jamie Comer, head of the House Government Oversight Committee, about old allegations of physical abuse that a former college girlfriend lobbed at Comer when he ran for Kentucky governor in 2015. To make a long story short, the reason why the abuse allegations surfaced is because Comer appears to have stolen emails about this very topic and leaked them to the media to sink the candidacy of a rival Republican, Hal Heiner. Instead, the leaked story of Comer’s abusive behavior forced Comer’s ex-girlfriend to provide information to the Louisville Courier-Journal just days before the primary vote. It got a lot of play in Louisville, and Comer lost the primary by 83 votes to Matt Bevin:
Nearly eight years after a former girlfriend accused him of hitting her when they dated in college, U.S. Rep. Jamie Comer has finally come clean about one part of the saga − telling the New York Times he was responsible for the leak that forced the story into the mainstream.
In other words, in what may have been one of the biggest, dumbest Machiavellian miscalculations in Kentucky political history, it was Comer himself who set in motion the slew of devastating stories during the last two weeks of the 2015 Republican primary campaign that likely cost him the governorship.
Ain’t no cure for stoopid.
Trump And Industry Falsified Toxic Chemical Assessments:
Trump administration appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) meddled in agency science to weaken the toxicity assessment of a dangerous chemical, a new report by the US body’s internal watchdog has found.
In its recent report, the EPA’s office of inspector general described “unprecedented” interference by former Trump-appointed EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and other political appointees, who ordered the alteration of the PFBS toxicity value just as the assessment was about to be published in late 2020. The revised assessment went live just four days before Trump left office in 2021.
The assessment would have been used by regulators to establish drinking-water quality standards and other environmental cleanup targets that companies must meet when addressing pollution. Instead of a specific target number, Wheeler ordered a range of toxicity values for PFBS, which meant companies required to clean up pollution could choose to leave higher levels of the chemical in the environment.
Ohhh, Gawd, the News-Journal is doing its most influential profiles again. (No, I’m not linking to it.) Didn’t shit like that used to be the unique province of Delaware Today? Nothing but clickbait for the ‘honorees’ and their friends.
What do you want to talk about?
“Most influential” = “People we’ve heard of”
A few days after being named one of Delaware’s most influential people in sports, Donna Polk was fired from her job as the executive director of the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association. To call her influential is probably accurate, but not necessarily in a good way.
I was wondering about that. Nobody’s talking. In fact, nobody’s even hinting.
Every time I grow disgusted with government in general I remind myself it could always be worse, and that the same creeps, crud and filth are in power in all states and countries, all that changes is by what amount.