Posted on 08/06/2013 7:44:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Perhaps you’ve heard the radio or TV commercials sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services urging seniors to report instances of Medicare fraud. There’s a number to call, along with cheerful suggestions.
The intent here seems benign enough — saving taxpayer money by catching the dishonest. One might even be tempted to praise it, were it not for what the Obama administration is doing with the other hand — issuing an engraved invitation to commit fraud when signing up for the health-care exchanges.
Obamacare is proving too unwieldy even for the greediest of big-government centralizers in the Obama administration. With only months to go before their Frankenstein was set to get its jolt of electricity in January 2014, they’ve announced a series of delays. The employer mandate, whereby businesses with 50 or more employees must certify that they are providing insurance that meets government requirements, will be delayed by a year. When you design a Rube Goldberg health-care system with a thousand moving parts — subsidies, mandates, exchanges, reporting requirements, sliding scales, and varying eligibility for Medicaid, expanded Medicaid, and so forth — it doesn’t take much to bring the whole contraption to a halt. By delaying the employer mandate, the Obama administration undercut its own complex system for calculating people’s eligibility for health exchanges. In theory, it was supposed to be based on family income, family size, the lack of employer-provided insurance, eligibility for other government programs, and more. (For further edification, consult the 600-page rule HHS issued on July 5.)
Under the circumstances (and leaving aside the legal problems with delaying implementation by executive fiat), the logical solution might have been to delay the entire law for one year. Instead, the administration announced that people can sign up for the exchanges “based on the honor system.”
This outright encouragement of fraud is profoundly immoral and takes the country in precisely the wrong direction. As Nicholas Eberstadt details in A Nation of Takers, the availability of entitlements is changing the character of the nation (or at least of large swaths of it). America was founded and populated by people with a horror of dependency. “Although many Americans in earlier times were poor, . . . even people in fairly desperate circumstances were known to refuse . . . handouts as an affront to their dignity.”
Both Democrats and Republicans contributed to eroding the stigma associated with dependency, but Democrats were more likely to describe benefits as “rights” and to condemn all attempts to verify or narrow eligibility as heartless cuts.
Between 1979 and 2009, the unemployment rate went up and down, but the proportion of American households receiving means-tested government benefits has risen every single year. “By 2009,” Eberstadt writes, “the share of American families getting poverty-related entitlements was almost three times as high as the official poverty rate for families.”
The new American appetite for the dole is reflected also in the explosion of disability claims — and this is relevant to the fraud concerns with Obama’s exchanges. Between 1960 and 2010, the percentage of economically active 18- to 65-year-olds on disability increased from 0.65 to 5.6 percent. In 1960, only about 455,000 Americans received disability awards. In 2011, that number had jumped to 8.6 million, an 18-fold increase. For those who are interested in such things, Eberstadt notes that most of the disability fraud seems to be committed by whites.
Nearly half of all disability claims in 2011 were for “mood disorders” or musculoskeletal complaints (read back pain), two ailments that doctors cannot readily contradict. It may be that better diagnosis accounts for some of the change since 1960, but treatment has improved as well, and life expectancy has increased by nine years.
“Gaming and defrauding the entitlement system have emerged as a mass phenomenon in modern America, a way of life for millions . . . of men and women who would no doubt unhesitatingly describe themselves as law-abiding.” Eberstadt writes.
The invitation to sign up fraudulently for health-exchange subsidies issued by the Obama administration this summer is not just evidence of the unworkability of Obamacare; it’s one more step toward undermining the character traits that made America exceptional.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
“America was founded and populated by people with a horror of dependency.”
I am rethinking this well-worn assumption. I am currently reading Undaunted Courage and learned that circa 1800 the population of the US was approx 5 million and that included 1 million slaves. I am thinking this 20% figure does not reflect a nation populated primarily of entrepreneurs and adventurers with a horror of dependency. THAT is a time bomb.
When will impeachment begin?
I haven’t heard anyone discuss this. But the definition of “dissability” (or maybe the interpretation) has significantly changed.
I know people on permanent disability that have gamed the system. In one case, a dad who is “permanently disabled” coaches his kids and is an avid hunter but is unable to work because of back pain. Should disability recipients be able to bowl? Play golf? Pick-up basketball games? League Softball? Snow Ski?
I’ve heard it described (excused) this way; They are no longer to perform the activities of their primary career, so they are disabled. I know a former nurse who is “disabled” that is able to bowl, carry around children, etc.
The real problem is the markets continuing to swallow unlimited amounts of Baraqqi/Bernanke/Lew minibucks.
This allows the fedgov to issue entitlements funded by fake money and buy elections.
Musculoskeletal complaints are easy to quantify with an MRI. My MRI shows that my spine is falling apart, Degenerative Disc Disease, and you know pain comes with it. Hubby’s MRI shows a collapsed disc with the 3 above it going also. Of course there is pain. Just saying your back hurts shouldn’t cut it unless there is an MRI which shows why there is pain.
I could give them a cheerful suggestion. But it would be anatomically impossible.
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I think they are setting everyone up to have them guilty of “something” so they can use the enforcement section of it to clamp down in a “soft police state” format that slowly evolves into the soviet gulag type....
- reposted for readability
Simple folks.....sign & endorse the “Lee/Cruz” defund Obamacare petition!!!
“www.dontfundobamacare.com”!!!! Sign & Endiorse it NOW!!!
He just uses Obamacare bankruptor sewage system and grabs for vouching for it by having people depend on it no matter. After getting out the military his people always lurk in US bases pushing for it.
If Obamacare were a sport or a union, and is like our government run AMTRACK....it would be and should be shut down in every state as a public nuisance as dangerous as a rabid animal and removed before the hour was out. Shut Obamacare Down.....is Valerie Jarrett this blind?
I’ve seen many who used to think being on the dole was bad look for ways to get their share. Although I don’t approve, I can understand the mindset. They work hard and pay taxes for years, and see everyone else getting the freebies. Why not them?
Honor system with government... riiiiight.
Excellent Ayn Rand quote. There was another great quote of hers that I have been trying to find, but I can’t find it. Maybe with all the great Ayn Rand fans here...
Essentially, she says when one can’t simply tear down a monument to something that is truly great, then just build a thousand monuments to mediocrity all around it and soon the great one will be lost in the noise. Sounds like something out of Fountainhead. Anyone recall that one?
IIRC, about 60 percent of adults in one study had an abnormal MRI, but no complaints. This study is even worse: Prevalence of Disc Degeneration in Asymptomatic Korean Subjects. Part 2 : Cervical Spine
Methods
We performed 3 T MRI sagittal scans from C2 to T1 on 102 asymptomatic subjects (50 men and 52 women) who visited our hospital between the ages of 14 and 82 years (mean age 46.3 years). All images were read independently by three observers (two neurosurgeons and one neuroradiologist) who were not given any information about the subjects. We classified grading for cervical disc herniation (HN), annular fissure (AF), and nucleus degeneration (ND), using disc degeneration classification.Results
The prevalence of HN, AF, and ND were 81.0%, 85.9%, and 95.4%, respectively. High prevalence of HN, AF, and ND was shown compared to previous literature.
Give them a MRI. There's a good chance they'll get an image they can abuse.
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