Evil Republican Congress

Bill Frist: Vampire Doctor
Bill Frist: Joe Millionaire
Republicans vs Workers
Republicans and Racism
Fiscal Spendthrifts
Pigs at the Trough
Buying Votes
Republicans Work Under Cover of Darkness

Does Bill Frist Have a Stake In the Stupid New Medicaid Bill?

Senate majority leader Bill Frist's household stake in HCA, his family's hospital chain, is $26,000,000.
--Physicians for a National Health Program (Chicago) (here)

Bad Medicine

From Harper's Magazine, February 2004 (here)

Although the government must provide drugs to 40 million people, it may not negotiate a bulk discount; it must pay whatever price the manufacturer sets or asks prices that in the recent past have been rising at a rate of 12 percent a year. The legislation forbids the importing of less expensive drugs from Canada, prohibits beneficiaries from buying supplemental insurance for drugs unacknowledged by Medicare, reduces or eliminates payments to as many as 6 million people for whom Medicaid now defrays at least some of their prescription costs, declares a suspension of payment at precisely the point when most people might need the most help.

An annual premium of $420 covers 75 percent of drug expenditures up to $2,250; from that point upward the beneficiary must pay, with his or her own money, 100 percent of the next $3,600 in costs once the expenditures reach a total of $5,850, the government pays 95 percent of the subsequent bill. The actuarial tables assume that relatively few people can afford (or will live long enough) to pay the toll on the bridge across the river of public money flowing out of Washington into the privately owned catch basins of the medical-industrial complex.

Among all the cheats and false suppositions written into the legislation, the assumption that private entities somehow might be induced to restrain spending should have been the easiest one to ferret out, if by nobody else than by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader. The good doctor knows, probably better than any of his colleagues in the Senate how to inflate a drug cost, supply an unnecessary medical procedure, pad a hospital bill. In 1968, Frist's father and elder brother established the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), which has since become the nation's largest consortium of for-profit hospitals and medical centers-252 of them in twenty-three states. For several decades the company required each of its hospitals to return a profit of 20 percent a year and to "upcode" their patients by exaggerating the degree and severity of their illnesses in order to receive, from Medicare, more generous reimbursements for the delivery of imaginary goods and services. So skilled did the hospitals become in the arts of medical chicanery that in December 2000 HCA admitted to a defrauding of the federal government so massive that it required the payment of fines in the amount of $840 million. Two years later, confronted with a supplementary set of similar charges, the company negotiated a settlement for an additional $631 million. The agreement was reached on December 18, 2002, two days before Frist was elected Senate majority leader.

Fiscal Conservatives?

We have maintained fiscal discipline in the nation's capital."
- House Majority Leader Tom Delay, 11/19/03

Tom Delay, legislating more and more pork, starts to look more and more like a pig. "Four legs good, two legs better!"

Despite a $480 billion deficit, "the number of pork projects skyrocketed from under 2,000 five years ago to 9,362 in the 2003 budget. Total spending on pork projects has correspondingly increased to over $23 billion."
(Actual quote from the right-wing Heritage Foundation)

The Washington Post reports that before conservatives took over the House in 1995, conservative lawmakers pilloried liberals for stuffing legislation with local projects. In 1992, Newt Gingrich (R-GA) told colleagues: "Liberals see no contradiction between adding a billion and a half dollars in pork-barrel spending for the politicians in their big-city machines and voting for a balanced budget amendment."

But a rising tide of conservatives spending on home-district projects is making those liberals of yesteryear look like mere pikers of pork. The study by the House Appropriations Committee Minority "finds that the number of home-state projects earmarked in various bills has skyrocketed" under the conservative leadership of Congress, despite conservatives' "rhetorical commitment to reining in a profligate federal government." Interestingly, "even some fiscally conservative Republicans have not been shy about taking credit for bringing home the bacon." The Web page of Rep.Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), a frequent critic of spending programs, lists projects Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), a frequent critic of spending programs, lists projects recently obtained for his district.

Insert Grunting Sounds Here

While conservatives argue that Medicare costs for seniors need to be strictly controlled, $150,000 was available for the Port of LaSalle project in Illinois, including the restoration of a replica mule barn.

Another absolute necessity: $200,000 for renovations to the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Texas. And the list goes on. $50 million for an indoor rain forest and aquarium in the prairies of Iowa. Also for Iowa: $400,000 for the "River Music Experience" on the banks of the Mississippi which will "tell the story of the river's musical history." There is $142,000 set aside to develop baby food from salmon and $3 million dollars to help young people play golf.

Idaho State University gets $250,000 to create a "Virtual Idaho Museum of National History." And the Boston Globe reports, " Hawaii gets $225,000 to celebrate its statehood. Pennsylvania gets $775,000 for the 'Please Touch Me' museum. And Alaska scores $180,000 for seafood waste." John Scofield, spokesman for the conservative-led House Appropriations Committee defended the special interest projects: "We think it's perfectly appropriate for members of Congress to make decisions on what additional federal investments to make."

The conservative, far right-wing Heritage Foundation reports "Congress's continued fiscal irresponsibility is clearly exhibited in the thousands of pork projects contained in the fiscal year 2004 omnibus spending bill...Over the last four years, federal spending has increased from $16,000 per household to $20,000 per household, the highest level since World War II."

The NYT editorial board writes, "the earmark tab has quietly grown 30-fold in the years since the GOP won the House in 1994." On top of that, "House leaders are threatening to dole out earmark money only to loyal Republicans. They would stiff taxpayers whose Democratic representatives dared to oppose obvious flaws in the spending measure. Rather than earmarking local slices of the financing pie, lawmakers should use that money for the nation's benefit, for things like educating disabled students, a program that will be shortchanged by over $1 billion next year, or Meals on Wheels, help for the elderly that is similarly stinted." Specifically, "Why not use the $1 billion in pork to make up some of the shortfall in the president's education promises?"

(The Heritage Foundation's List of Pork)

Buying votes, pt. 1

Slate reports that strong-arming on the Medicare bill by the White House and congressional leadership became so severe that one congressman implied that bribery was taking place. Rep Nick Smith (R-MI) "says that sometime late Nov. 21 or early in the morning Nov. 22, somebody on the House floor threatened to redirect campaign funds away from his son Brad, who is running to succeed him, if he didn't support the Medicare prescription bill." Columnist Robert Novak further reports, "on the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote." (here)

Buying votes, pt. 2

One of the most controversial provisions in the Medicare bill was one specifically prohibiting Medicare from negotiating lower prices from drug companies. How could such an egregious provision be included? According to Rep. Ted Strickland (D-OH), the drug companies exerted direct influence over Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the seven negotiators of the final bill who received a combined $11 million from the health care industry since 2000. Strickland recounted on the floor of the House: "A few days ago the Blue Dogs met with our Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mr. Tommy Thompson, and two Democratic Senators were there, Senator Breaux and Senator Baucus. And in that meeting, a question was asked: 'Why is there a prohibition against the Secretary from negotiating discounted costs for America's senior citizens?' And Senator Baucus said, 'it is in there because the pharmaceutical companies insisted that it be in there.' Shame, shame, shame on you."

(great picture: follow the money)
(Text of speech: PDF file)

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