DL Open Thread Monday, Sept. 9, 2024
John Carney wasn’t alone in trying to force people into Medicare Advantage. Among the horrors of Project 2025 is a scheme to make Medicare Advantage rather than traditional Medicare the default plan for enrollees. That’s not just bad for enrollees, who have worse outcomes on Medicare Advantage, it’s bad for Medicare’s solvency.
In theory, the Medicare Advantage program was supposed to help the government benefit from the private sector’s efficiencies. In practice, many insurers overcharge the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in inflated estimates, often by adding diagnosis codes that make individuals appear sicker on paper than they are in reality. MedPac, a nonpartisan Congressional advisory committee, estimates that in 2024, inflated estimates will translate to $50 billion in overpayments. An analysis from PNHP, published in 2023, estimates that Medicare overpays insurers by as much as $140 billion per year.
More evidence that Republicans are as bad at math as they are at everything else. Somebody did the math on all of the wild tax cuts proposed by Trump and Project 2025. The revenue loss to government comes to $10.5 trillion over 10 years, about four times the amount his proposed tariffs would raise. Now you understand how he could go bankrupt owning a casino.
The Russians, far from acting embarrassed about getting busted for their propaganda payments, are cackling about it on state media. They also made a suggestion I like: that the flushed-out influencers can seek asylum in Russia. Better yet, let’s force them to by prosecuting them for treason.
In the latest weird weather news, the monsoon rains that usually fall around the equator in Africa have moved north and inundated the Sahara with years’ worth of rainfall in a few days. The shift has also curtailed tropical storm formation, which helps explain our so-far quiet hurricane season.
In an interesting example of how everything is interconnected, a study that examined the effects of the fungus that wiped out a large number of bat colonies found a link to higher infant mortality. Because the bats weren’t there to eat the vast numbers of insects they consume, farmers had to increase their use of pesticides, and sure enough, infant mortality was higher in areas where bat populations were wiped out.
The floor’s yours.
Speaking of Medicare Advantage, what do we have here? Oh hey, it’s the minutes from the SEBC meeting where Bethany Hall-Long voted to adopt Medicare Advantage: https://dhr.delaware.gov/benefits/sebc/documents/2022/0425-minutes.pdf
This is before she pretended to be against it.
This is BHL in a nutshell. She’s a weathervane. She has no core principles, other than lining her pockets. She’s a follower to the core.
Even if she were as clean as a whistle she’s unqualified for the job, though of course having useless fuck predecessors like Ruth Ann Minner and John Carney has given her the false idea that she is. Yeah, she’s as good as they were, so if you want incompetent Delaware Way Democrats lining their own pockets for four more years, vote Bethany.
Speaking of the Candidates for Governor in Our Primary, I clicked on a link in the email I get each morning from the Daily Briefing for the News Journal. It was supposed to direct me to an article “Governors Race :Insights from Our Editorial Board”.
Instead it to me to an article: “Offshore wind project off Delaware, Maryland coast gets approved. Here’s what comes next”
What? All the candidates blow?
RIP: James Earl Jones:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/09/09/james-earl-jones-dead/
BHL and Val lied about supporting the Inspector General bill and they went down to hell where they belong. Having coffee ☕️ with the Devil.