If you want to understand why Aetna, Independence Blue Cross (Keystone), and other insurance companies are dropping some, though not all, of their Medicare Advantage policies, you have to understand the way these plans have been tainted by President Obama and the Democratic proposals for Obamacare in its various forms. Their proposals, not yet enacted, will destroy the greatest health care delivery system in the world if enacted. But what they have already done has started to do serious damage to our system, as exemplified by what is going on with Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage plans are popular and have many advantages for senior citizens. So, naturally, Mr. Obama wants to kill them.
The trade association America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) describes Medicare Advantage plans as follows: "An increasing number of Medicare beneficiaries are choosing Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. Medicare Advantage plans offer a different approach to health care delivery than beneficiaries experience under fee-for-service Medicare. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on treating beneficiaries when they are sick, these plans also place a strong emphasis on preventive health care services that help to keep beneficiaries healthy, detect diseases at an early stage and avoid preventable illnesses. In addition, MA plans help reduce beneficiaries' out-of-pocket costs by providing additional benefits not covered in the Medicare program and reducing cost-sharing for Medicare-covered benefits." AHIP says about 10 million people are now enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, accounting for 25 percent of the market.
Mr. Obama has proposed cutting the heart out of Medicare in general and Medicare Advantage plans in particular by trying to save about a half a trillion dollars to finance his government takeover of our health delivery system. This Obama proposal and its reasons are, of course, as phony as a three-and-a-half dollar bill, as everyone knows those savings have been talked about for decades, but never achieved. They are virtually inherent in a government system of health delivery and the fraud, waste, inefficiency and abuse it produces. If those savings from eliminating fraud, etc. are there, why haven't they already realized them?
But the Obama Medicare and Medicare Advantage savings ploy is not only a phony idea, but also an immediately damaging one. Mr. Obama has demonized Medicare Advantage, virtually painting it as a fraud, involving government payments for no good purpose. This has probably raised concerns in the minds of Medicare Advantage providers, who may wonder about the future of this form of coverage. But there's more. When you see the disgraceful performance of Mr. Obama and his leftist radical Congress who are in the process of acting more like junior dictators than legislators, you wonder why anyone would even want to be in the business of selling health insurance. Consider what Congress is doing:
The Democratic Congress has been passing bills of astronomical cost and complexity without reading them
The legislative process has frozen out the Republicans, so what should be a bipartisan process, as promised by Obama, is turning out to be hyper partisanship at its worst, Obama style
These same Democrats have voted against giving the public 72 hours before a vote to read the bills. You'd think if Congress doesn't want to read the bills, at least it would allow the public the right to do so, given Mr. Obama's promise of transparency
Then there's the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which just passed not a bill with legislative language, but a bill with "concepts." This means no one knows what the bill will cost or what it will really mean once it is translated into legislative language. The Democratic Senate is, in a real sense, flying blind and is about to crash not only our health care delivery system, but our economy as well
Finally, Mr. Obama and Congress are willing to ignore the Town Hall meetings, the Tea Parties and public opinion, which concertedly, repetitiously and loudly say, "Read the bills, let us read the bills and don't wreck our present health care delivery system."
I would think this would frighten much of the health insurance industry, and they may well want to start pruning or cutting back some of their coverage. But there's one other striking development about the Medicare Advantage scenario. Mr. Obama seems to have a knack of doing exactly the opposite of the right thing. He's never off just 20 or 30 degrees in one direction; he's usually off 180 degrees, being totally, absolutely wrong. Consider his views on Medicare Advantage. He wants to cut their special funding which will effectively abolish them.
What makes this view bizarre is that Mr. Obama has been singing the praises of prevention and even claiming huge savings because he plans on introducing more prevention into the health care delivery system. Yet, the Medicare Advantage Plans already stresses prevention and the kind of case management of chronic illnesses that generates prevention of complications and disease. Medicare Advantage Plans have built in features that encourage preventive medicine. For example, they may feature comprehensive disease management for such medical problems as asthma, diabetes, and congestive heart failure. A spokesman of Aetna, Inc., Walt Cherniak, told me their plans may provide online tools for managing disease, access to nurses for medical management, and the monitoring of cases to make sure each patient gets the care they need. The Medicare Advantage plans also feature first dollar coverage so policyholders have no incentive to skip routine tests and monitoring. Like Aetna, Independence Blue Cross also has an impressive list of features to promote prevention.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/19/2009 00:00 ||
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Iran has blamed the United States for Sunday's suicide bombing in Sistan-Balochistan province in which six Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders were killed, as well as 37 other people. In an indirect way, the charge is true. No one in Washington these days would dream of blowing up Iranian officials, to be sure. America's abdication of its position as the world's sole superpower, though, will make incidents of this sort routine.
Without America to mediate, scold and restrain, each of the small powers in the region has no choice but to test its strength against the others. That is why the major players in the region resemble a troupe of manic Morris dancers in a minefield.
Much more as Spengler explores the Byzantine possibilities in his inimitable style.
#2
Spengler thinks that Obama, regardless of his Chi credentials, is anti-American third worder working to bring the Great Satan to its knees. I'm on record at 'burg saying "Obama's election = foreign conquest of USA". Of course, like Spengler, I'm an outsider (trees, forrest)---most of you still frame the problem in Trunks-Dem conflict terms.
p.s. That's why I get so enthused over every news item indicating some Democrats beginning to fear Obama.
Due to a hellish crash on the autobahn yestereday, I had to detour past Dachau in route to Franz Josef Strauss International Airport. Nothing like motoring by that place to bring on a sense of man's capacity for hate and inhumanity. Few admitted to being part of that affair after the war. I dare say few will admit to having voted for Barry when his last chapter is written either.
#5
Beso,
There you go calling Obama a Nazi and stuff like that. And you must be a racist, what with that South African name and all.
(channeling a typical liberal)
My, that was quick. The oppressors of the Iranian people (and the aspirations of Iranian minorities) meet a bloody end and the administration condemns the violence and "loss of innocent(?) life" less than 24 hours after the attack?
Too bad they couldn't have reacted with similar swiftness when hundreds of thousands of Iranians were marching in the streets for a little freedom and thousands of their number were being beaten and shot by militias under the direct control of the Revolutionary Guards.
The U.S. has condemned a suicide attack that killed five Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members today.
Five commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in suicide attacks in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province bordering Pakistan, according to reports.
The Baluch group Jundullah claimed responsibility for the attack, that killed some 30 people.
Iranian authorities have accused the group of receiving funding from foreign countries including the United States. The US has denied supporting Jundullah.
"We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "Reports of alleged U.S. involvement are completely false."
Bombers reportedly struck a car early Sunday carrying Guards as they headed to a meeting to hold a dialogue to try to improve relations between the region's Sunni and Shiites. "In one attack, a suicide bomber wearing a military uniform and an explosive belt entered a mosque where guard commanders were organizing a reconciliation meeting between local Sunni and Shiite Muslim leaders, according to the semi-official ILNA news service," the Times reported.
Ed Lasky adds:
No ..this is not the Onion.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Argentinian Jews, Israelis (Jews and Muslims), thousands of Iraqis and the torture and murder of thousands of their own people.
The IRG is behind Iran's nuclear weapons program, has taken over huge chunks of the Iranian economy.
So of course, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the Iranian regime.
Terrorist attacks anywhere are a cause for concern and should, of course, be condemned. But consistency in our statements on Iran is just as important. The belated, and mild remonstrances by the Obama administration over the loss of life - the terrorist attacks by the regime on its own people - leaves a lot to be desired.
#1
...Not like it's gonna help. The Iranians had their backs to the wall, they were going to have to give in on the nuclear issue (at least to a certain extent. The nice guys at Jindullah just handed them a perfect excuse to pop us the bird.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/19/2009 11:52 Comments ||
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#2
It's a little hard for me to cheer on Balochi terrs. Terrorists are terrorists and I have no doubt that the Balochi terrs are just as nasty and evil as .. oh, say .. the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/19/2009 12:29 Comments ||
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#3
Stunning. If he were actually the enemy what would he do different?
#4
There are some in the IRGC which are responsible for decisions which launched said terrorist attacks. Did somebody pull bios on the killed officers which showed that they included such perpetrators? Because I have difficulty imagining that a random bombing attack on a headquarters would just happen to kill actual assholes, as opposed to uniformed bureaucrats or random majors, colonels, and the folks that bring them their coffee.
The embrace of collective guilt is the road to secular hell.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
10/19/2009 14:50 Comments ||
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#5
Well . . . at least he didn't apologize. This administration has overloaded my wtf reflex. I'm not surprised by them anymore. All I have is outrage and a sense this craziness is going to reap a whirlwind.
The New Republic's publisher Marty Peretz, who evinces buyer's remorse over Obama's Middle East policy, diagnosed the president with "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" in his blog on October 4.
Here TNR journalist Peter Bergen explains part of the reason why over the course of five pages. An taste:
In fact, the government believes that Zazi, a onetime coffee-cart operator on Wall Street and shuttle-van driver at the Denver airport, was planning what could have been the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since September 11. Prior to his arrest last month, the FBI discovered pages of handwritten notes on his laptop detailing how to turn common, store-bought chemicals into bombs. If proven guilty, Zazi would be the first genuine Al Qaeda recruit discovered in the United States in the past few years.
The novel details of the case were sobering. Few Americans, after all, were expecting to be terrorized by an Al Qaeda agent wielding hair dye. But it was perhaps the least surprising fact about Zazi that was arguably the most consequential: where he is said to have trained.
In August 2008, prosecutors allege, Zazi traveled to Pakistan's tribal regions and studied explosives with Al Qaeda members. If that story sounds familiar, it should: Nearly every major jihadist plot against Western targets in the last two decades somehow leads back to Afghanistan or Pakistan. The first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was masterminded by Ramzi Yousef, who had trained in an Al Qaeda camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Ahmed Ressam, who plotted to blow up LAX airport in 1999, was trained in Al Qaeda's Khaldan camp in Afghanistan. Key operatives in the suicide attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000 trained in Afghanistan; so did all 19 September 11 hijackers. The leader of the 2002 Bali attack that killed more than 200 people, mostly Western tourists, was a veteran of the Afghan camps. The ringleader of the 2005 London subway bombing was trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The British plotters who planned to blow up passenger planes leaving Heathrow in the summer of 2006 were taking direction from Pakistan; a July 25, 2006, e-mail from their Al Qaeda handler in that country, Rashid Rauf, urged them to "get a move on." If that attack had succeeded, as many as 1,500 would have died. The three men who, in 2007, were planning to attack Ramstein Air Base, a U.S. facility in Germany, had trained in Pakistan's tribal regions.
And yet, as President Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can therefore defeat the former while tolerating the latter; that flushing jihadists out of one failing state will merely cause them to pop up in another anarchic corner of the globe; that, in the age of the Internet, denying terrorists a physical safe haven isn't all it's cracked up to be.
These arguments point toward one conclusion: The effort to secure Afghanistan is not a matter of vital U.S. interest. But those who make this case could not be more mistaken. Afghanistan and the areas of Pakistan that border it have always been the epicenter of the war on jihadist terrorism-and, at least for the foreseeable future, they will continue to be. Though it may be tempting to think otherwise, we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan.
Noemie Emery, The Weekly Standard In which the author finds a common thread tying together Roman Polanski, David Letterman, and five clueless Norwegians....
...Letterman will doubtless survive as a comic (and now as a punchline for other comedians), and Polanski's defenders will not lose jobs or money, but this is just part of the tale. Hollywood and the late-night comedians have been sizable assets for Democrats, and their clout is now diminished. Letterman was not just an entertainer, but a political force, who judged politicians, pressed them on issues, and controlled their access to a fairly large audience. Candidates launched campaigns on Letterman's program. Barack Obama went on his show a few weeks ago to try to revive his stalled health care agenda; it was political news when Letterman threw a tantrum because John McCain cancelled an appearance on his program during the financial implosion last fall. But politicians do not count creeps as their buddies, at least not in public: The McCains and Obamas will no longer seek Letterman out. He has lost his power to help--or to hurt--politicians, and lost the ability to joke about their failings without having the joke be on him. In the past year, as Howard Kurtz said, "Letterman has been more openly political, and tilted more to the left," so this is good news for the other persuasion. Sarah Palin has her revenge for the snotty remarks of last summer. Dave the comic may survive or even flourish, but Dave as a pol is kaputt.
Hollywood as a political force is hardly dead, but the Polanski affair wounded it. In particular, anyone who spoke for Polanski or signed the petition supporting him has neutralized himself as a political player, as someone who can hold, host, or perhaps even go to a fundraiser, or perhaps even stand next to a candidate without doing damage to his prospects. On October 7, Politico reported that signers of the Polanski petition gave $34,000 in 2008 to groups backing Obama, that Harvey Weinstein gave $28,500 in 2008 to the White House Victory Fund that supported Obama (and $88,000 over the years to Hillary Clinton), and that six others gave contributions totaling $15,500 to Obama. Contributions in future campaigns will receive the same scrutiny. This may be somewhat unfair, as all politicians and parties are backed by unsavory people, but guilt-by-association is a time-honored tactic, and politicians are often asked to explain their supporters. Can we say chilling effect?...
For years--even more so since 2002, when the Nobel Peace Prize committee smiled on ex-President Carter (as a slap at George Bush, it freely admitted)--conservatives have longed in vain to see the Norwegian parliamentarians exposed as a gaggle of partisans. It only got worse when the committee gave its prize in 2005 to Mohamed ElBaradei, the anti-U.S., pro-Iran U.N. arms inspector, and in 2007 to Al Gore, who had lost to Bush in 2000 in an exceedingly close and contentious election and railed against him ever since as a warmongering liar, and worse. Conservatives struggled for years but failed to gain traction with their critiques. So picture their glee on the morning of October 9 when they awoke to discover that the committee had contrived to discredit itself. In its ultimate slap at George Bush (who is no longer in office, but why should this stop them?), it had given the peace prize to Barack Obama for doing not much of anything beyond setting a new "tone."
It certainly set a new tone in the response to the Nobel committee itself. Reporters gasped when they heard the announcement. Bloggers thought they had clicked by mistake on satire sites like the Onion and Scrappleface. "This is ridiculous--embarrassing even," said Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post. "Ridiculous," echoed Mother Jones's Kevin Drum. "Folks across the spectrum are asking, 'what has he done?' " wrote Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics, and many of the most appalled and scalding of comments would come from the left. "This is so far out of nowhere that it could be almost embarrassing," said the Guardian's Michael Tomasky. Even the Huffington Post couldn't stand it: "It is enormously premature . . . [and] to a certain extent cheapens the prior recipients," opined one of its contributors. Aside from the bad taste, the timing was terrible, as Obamania had started to fade in America, (his approval ratings were stuck around 50 percent), and a meme had been born that he was failing to meet expectations. The prize, as Politico noted, felt like "a breathless fan letter from the European elite."
Posted by: Mike ||
10/19/2009 09:20 ||
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#1
From the article: "Candidates launched campaigns on Letterman's program. Barack Obama went on his show a few weeks ago to try to revive his stalled health care agenda...The McCains and Obamas will no longer seek Letterman out"
Somebody better tell the WH; heard this afternoon that FLOTUS is going on the Leno program; while not the disaster the Letterman phuqueup is, it ain't much better. ratings in the tank. maybe its a case of two losers trying to prop each other up????
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
If you want to understand why Aetna, Independence Blue Cross (Keystone), and other insurance companies are dropping some, though not all, of their Medicare Advantage policies, you have to understand the way these plans have been tainted by President Obama and the Democratic proposals for Obamacare in its various forms. Their proposals, not yet enacted, will destroy the greatest health care delivery system in the world if enacted. But what they have already done has started to do serious damage to our system, as exemplified by what is going on with Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage plans are popular and have many advantages for senior citizens. So, naturally, Mr. Obama wants to kill them.
