The Health and Human Services Department has released the results of its internal investigation into the way the Bush administration kept higher estimates of the cost of the Medicare prescription benefit from Congress.

First, let's note that this is an internal investigation by the administration.

Even so, while saying that no law was broken, the report acknowledges the coverup.

Here's relevant bits from the AP story:

Now some context:

And then there's this little gem at the end:

So we have HHS saying there was a coverup but it did nothing wrong, a nonpartisan report saying it broke the law and Tommy Thompson refusing to release the records after saying he would do so.

Bush backers (especially JP5): Any of you still want to line up to defend this?

All I will do is try to add to what you have said.

I have followed the Medicare Reform Bill very closely & I can tell you this bill is the reason I left the Republican party. I decided I could be a fiscal conservative or a Republican, but I could not be both.

This deal was so sleezy & wasteful & will actually hurt seniors more than it helps them.

1. This deal will probably cost us a little over 1 trillion in general funds dollars over the next ten years as opposed to his original estimate of 200 billion.

2. They could not get the bill passed until they left the vote open all night so GWB could personally call the 55 dissenting House Republicans (fiscal conservatives) who did not orginially supported it. I have no first hand account of the situation, but everything I hear indicates he threatened and twisted arms until he got what he needed.

3. Sculley did threaten the back office number cruncher at Medicare and surpress information that was relevant to a huge spending bill. If that is not illegal, then it should be.

4. This bill pays off GWB's friends in the pharmacutical industry by specifically restricting the govt from paying anything less than full retail. If we were running Medicare like a business, then Wal-Mart is the example for large purchase contracts. If you really run it like a business, then you use the power of your volume purchasing capacity to negotiate the best prices possible. If you run government like a piggy bank for your political backers, however, then you have a law written to specifically require Medicare to pay full retail prices.

5. This bill has a 10 billion dollar fund for subsidizing the insurance companies attempts to compete with Medicare on distributing benefits. The goals and parameters of the program are so vauge and poorly defined, that it really does fit Ted Kennedy's definition as a "Slush Fund". Don't get me wrong, I think Ted Kennedy is a blustering fool who cares more about himself than he cares for the people he pretends to serve. Still, on this fact, he got it right. This is a 10 billion dollar slush fund for insurance companies because there are no clear definitions of how the money is earned.

6. There are no effective safeguards for preventing drug costs to rise to more than offset the discounts of the seniors cards. Reports are all over the place talking about how drug costs are outpacing inflation by a 3 to 1 margin this year.

7. There are no effective safeguards to keep private plans associated with corporate retirement benefits from being dropped. Corporations can drop seniors left and right and they will be forced to go into the Medicare plan that will be more expensive for them. To add insult to injury, the law was written in a way where these same corporations can get subsidies for carrying these people while they are dropping them. Its amazing. Its effectively a gift from the federal government while these same corporations drop seniors and effectively raise the out of pocket healthcare costs of the very people this bill is supposedly helping.

8. This bill cuts 11 billion from medicare reimbursements of cancer patients over the next 10 years.

9. The AMA's support was bought by offering slightly higher reimbursements in exchange for their endorsement. I suppose we can call this their 12 pieces of silver.

10. The leadership of the AARP was bought off because they thought this would be a boost to their future revenues since they could make more money be referring their members to various insurance companies.

11. The seniors, the very people who this bill was supposed to help were overwhelmingly against the bill. By way more than a 2 to 1 margin. Seems like Bush did not care what the seniors wanted when he came up with this scheme.

12. As proof that the Medicare Reform Bill is even less popular with seniors today, something like half a million seniors have voluntarily switched to the prescription drug program. Yes I know the official number is 2.8 million, but 2.3 million were involuntary conversions so they really do not count when trying to understand the number of willing participants.

The bottom line is this is a bad, dirty bill. It was never intended to benefit seniors. In fact, seniors are worse off now than they were before it was passed and they know it (according to polls and participation in the plan). This bill was nothing more than a way for GWB to reward political supporters and he is willing to take the money away from sick old people to do it.

Maybe Dick Cheney said, F*#% you to someone in Washington who probably deserved it, but George W. Bush said F*#% you to the seniors of this country with his sham of a bill.

...for the Dallas Morning News, has this to say:

This is all in addition to Bush's $1.5 trillion tax cut, which will actually cost more than that because of interest expenses. Estimates of that ADDITIONAL cost range from $350 billion to another $1.5 trillion.

I hear the Congressional Republicans are going to seriouisly curtail the benefits of this program in 2005. This is little more than a shell game to confuse the American voting public & I predict seniors will be much worse off than they were before this BS legislation was ever put in place.

Between you and me I think GWB is guilty of misrepresenting the true costs of this Bill to Congress before they voted. I hope they catch him on it and pimp smack him back to Texas. Until these SOBs (both Republican & Democrats) recognize they are public servants and stewards of public resources, we are going to have to make a couple of examples out of these turkeys and I think GWB would be a great place to start.

In my eyes it was all just alot of fancy wording and smoke and mirrors to line the pockets of insurance and pharmaceutical companies while making it illegal to get cheaper perscriptions from Canada. The American public, especially the senior citizens got screwed on this one.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Okay, this thing has been up for about 24 hours, and not a single Bush-backer has popped in to say the Bush administration is blameless. Seems like we're agreed there was a coverup, as I stated in the "Administration Lies" thread sometime back.

Of course, not a single Bush-backer has had the cojones to pop in and admit the Bush administration lied, either. That would have been a breath of fresh air.

It will never happen, thats the problem with the neo-cons. It is impossible to be wrong when God is behind you. B/c if you are wrong, then God is wrong and that cannot happen.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Interesting

If someone lied there should be an accounting. Whether or not Bush knew is obviously up for debate. I always thought this bill was crap anyway so nothing changes that opinion.

Let's investigate real fraud against the American people and make GWB testify under oath. Then we can either show he is a liar or charge him with purjury. It is certainly a more relevent thing to investigate than spending $80 million to see if the President had an affair.

To tell us what he knew regarding the true long term costs associated with this bill. He personally twisted arms to get it passed and worked very closely with Scully. If Bush knew about Scully threatening the job of the Medicare actuary who wanted to tell Congress that actual cost would be way over 200 million, then the people have a right to know. Even if no criminal offense is proven, the American public has a right to know how the office of President was misused by GWB before they vote for another 4 years.

Let the people decide if thats the sort of integrity and "compassionate conservatism" they want in the White House.