The big picture
We talk about how our nation's government manages year in and year out to spend more money than it takes in. Rarely do we closely examine some of the factors that can be controlled in a way to shrink that deficit. A news story I saw for the first time on this Sunday (June 21) is a message that we should be talking about a few of those factors.
The FBI arrested 46 doctors and nurses across the nation in a case of Medicare fraud where over $700 million was paid for healthcare that was never given or not needed. Sounds huge and it is a large number. But it is dwarfed by the FY 2013 Medicare benefit payments amount which was more than $583 billion (according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a respected nonprofit involved in healthcare). This latest incidence of fraud represents just over 1/10th of one percent of the total Medicare spending. The proverbial drop in the bucket. But it is a symptom of the larger problem.
A 2010 GAO report claimed that there was "$48 billion in improper payments" among the payouts for Medicare benefit payments. Former Attorney General Eric Holder is cited in a Forbes magazine analysis of Medicare as believing there was between $60 billion and $90 billion annually in Medicare fraud. That's an improper payment rate of more than 10% and closing in on 20%. Considering that in the private healthcare industry, improper claims payment rates of over 1.5% will cause a major panic and investigation, this is completely unacceptable.
Meanwhile, a CBS News story from October of 2013 points out that the IRS was at that time paying out an average of more than $11 billion a year in Earned Income Tax Credits that the taxpayers involved were not eligible for. That's just one aspect of income tax fraud/evasion that may be costing the federal government as much as $70 billion annually.
Using conservative estimates of $50 billion each for Medicare fraud and income tax fraud, that's an annual amount of $100 billion lost from the federal coffers. How does that stack up against the total budget? Let's look at it as being part of the federal budget deficit, estimated to be $564 billion in the latest such guesstimate. Put simply, almost 20% of the current federal budget deficit is being caused by fraudulent/improper payments.
How are the 535 geniuses who lavish luxury on themselves as they govern on our behalf dealing with this? Due to spite over the allegations that Tea Party non-profit wannabes were persecuted by the IRS, the Republicans in control of the house sliced well over $300 million from the current IRS budget. Even when faced with good estimates that these cuts would reduce tax collections by over $1.5 billion, they went ahead and made it even more difficult for the IRS to prevent these frauds.
What is the answer? Spend more, not less, on claims examiners, revenue agents and so on. Every dollar spent will return much more in increased revenues. But it won't happen. The people who vote like the fact they now face a much lower probability of having their tax returns audited. Those same people don't want their claims for power chairs and other such things looked at to ensure they are needs rather than wants before being funded by Medicare. So this probably won't happen. Even if it would be a good idea.
* * *
Periscope is a new app for your smartphone that enables you to stream live whatever video your phone is recording at any given moment. Some of my friends think others spend way too much time streaming the most unimportant aspects of their lives. I won't pass judgment on when someone is spending too much time sharing their life on social media. That's for them to decide and for others to decide just how much of such things they want to view.
Now the U. S. Golf Association has let fans attending the U. S. Open know, use Periscope to live stream anything while they are there and they will be banished. Considering that Fox Sports is paying the USGA a fortune for the rights to broadcast the tournament, this seems fair. Fans have always been able to take still photographs at sporting events, within limits. But until technology reached this point, a single fan couldn't do what a broadcast network is doing in terms of providing live coverage of an event. Would you bother with the Fox Sports coverage of Rory McIlroy trying to sink a putt if you could watch it commercial-free on someone's Periscope feed? I sure wouldn't but then again I have no interest in watching golf on television.
I've seen businesses that prohibit even still photography on their premises. Hooters is the first that leaps to mind because at most locations when a patron wants to take photos of the girls, they pay for the privilege. If you make money by selling still photos inside your walls you certainly aren't going to give them away. It used to be sacrilege to take photos inside a Las Vegas casino but now people seem to do it quite often.
Personally, if I owned a business I wouldn't permit much in the way of personal photography and/or Periscope type streaming within my establishment. If I were running a restaurant, I wouldn't have a problem with the incessant photographing of food that some people seem unable to resist engaging in. That's free promotion. And I wouldn't mind the occasional family portrait and so on. I just don't want flashing lights going off every 25 seconds and spoiling the ambience of the room.
Also on a personal note, if I paid big money to attend a sporting event, I want to watch the event, not stream it live for others to watch.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
I wanted to play a quick game of chess online, so I went to a game site and signed up to play. Rather than getting a new game, I was somehow put into a game where I was in a bad position. I figured I was playing someone good. I was wrong. 20 moves later, he resigned. :)
I like Kate Hudson and her brother Oliver a lot, and I can see why they think of Kurt Russell as their "father." But do they need to keep blasting Bill Hudson for having abandoned them when they were young? Let go of the anger.
President Obama said, "Racism, we are not cured of it, and it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public." I don't find his use of the n-word unacceptable. But I wonder if it's fair that no previous president would have been roundly criticized for saying the same thing?
On a related topic, it's long past time to take down the Confederate flag from outside the capitol of South Carolina.
Sad to hear that Kenni Thomas Nickel has died. You may not recognize the name, but you probably saw the video. He was homeless and appeared in a video where he was given $100. Rather than use it for drinks or drugs, he bought food and shared it with other homeless people. RIP.
Sam Dekker is a rarity. A white man who is going to be selected in the NBA draft later this week. He points out that when people compare his game to that of other players, he's almost always compared to other white players. Considering how much of a minority white players are in the NBA, I find this interesting.
Read about a man who got an IRS tax refund for over $70,000 and he hadn't even filed his return yet. I wonder how many people would have just cashed the check and forgotten about it?
Now we learn that Audrey Hepburn was so very thin because she'd suffered from malnourishment during WWII. Makes total sense.
McDonald's won't comment on an on-going labor dispute involving one of its CA produce suppliers. Nor will a contractor working for McDonald's who was hired to look into the allegations. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.
When you have a case pending in criminal court for DUI, it's kind of stupid to get arrested again for the same thing, even if it is in another state. Then again, Flavor Flav isn't known for genius.
Meryl Streep wrote to every member of Congress seeking to revive the Equal Rights Amendment. Cool idea, but given the Republican majorities in both houses I don't see it getting any traction.
The pressure to get into the elite schools is so tough at one high school that one of the students there faked getting into both Stanford and Harvard on full scholarship. That's rough.
The FBI arrested 46 doctors and nurses across the nation in a case of Medicare fraud where over $700 million was paid for healthcare that was never given or not needed. Sounds huge and it is a large number. But it is dwarfed by the FY 2013 Medicare benefit payments amount which was more than $583 billion (according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a respected nonprofit involved in healthcare). This latest incidence of fraud represents just over 1/10th of one percent of the total Medicare spending. The proverbial drop in the bucket. But it is a symptom of the larger problem.
A 2010 GAO report claimed that there was "$48 billion in improper payments" among the payouts for Medicare benefit payments. Former Attorney General Eric Holder is cited in a Forbes magazine analysis of Medicare as believing there was between $60 billion and $90 billion annually in Medicare fraud. That's an improper payment rate of more than 10% and closing in on 20%. Considering that in the private healthcare industry, improper claims payment rates of over 1.5% will cause a major panic and investigation, this is completely unacceptable.
Meanwhile, a CBS News story from October of 2013 points out that the IRS was at that time paying out an average of more than $11 billion a year in Earned Income Tax Credits that the taxpayers involved were not eligible for. That's just one aspect of income tax fraud/evasion that may be costing the federal government as much as $70 billion annually.
Using conservative estimates of $50 billion each for Medicare fraud and income tax fraud, that's an annual amount of $100 billion lost from the federal coffers. How does that stack up against the total budget? Let's look at it as being part of the federal budget deficit, estimated to be $564 billion in the latest such guesstimate. Put simply, almost 20% of the current federal budget deficit is being caused by fraudulent/improper payments.
How are the 535 geniuses who lavish luxury on themselves as they govern on our behalf dealing with this? Due to spite over the allegations that Tea Party non-profit wannabes were persecuted by the IRS, the Republicans in control of the house sliced well over $300 million from the current IRS budget. Even when faced with good estimates that these cuts would reduce tax collections by over $1.5 billion, they went ahead and made it even more difficult for the IRS to prevent these frauds.
What is the answer? Spend more, not less, on claims examiners, revenue agents and so on. Every dollar spent will return much more in increased revenues. But it won't happen. The people who vote like the fact they now face a much lower probability of having their tax returns audited. Those same people don't want their claims for power chairs and other such things looked at to ensure they are needs rather than wants before being funded by Medicare. So this probably won't happen. Even if it would be a good idea.
* * *
Periscope is a new app for your smartphone that enables you to stream live whatever video your phone is recording at any given moment. Some of my friends think others spend way too much time streaming the most unimportant aspects of their lives. I won't pass judgment on when someone is spending too much time sharing their life on social media. That's for them to decide and for others to decide just how much of such things they want to view.
Now the U. S. Golf Association has let fans attending the U. S. Open know, use Periscope to live stream anything while they are there and they will be banished. Considering that Fox Sports is paying the USGA a fortune for the rights to broadcast the tournament, this seems fair. Fans have always been able to take still photographs at sporting events, within limits. But until technology reached this point, a single fan couldn't do what a broadcast network is doing in terms of providing live coverage of an event. Would you bother with the Fox Sports coverage of Rory McIlroy trying to sink a putt if you could watch it commercial-free on someone's Periscope feed? I sure wouldn't but then again I have no interest in watching golf on television.
I've seen businesses that prohibit even still photography on their premises. Hooters is the first that leaps to mind because at most locations when a patron wants to take photos of the girls, they pay for the privilege. If you make money by selling still photos inside your walls you certainly aren't going to give them away. It used to be sacrilege to take photos inside a Las Vegas casino but now people seem to do it quite often.
Personally, if I owned a business I wouldn't permit much in the way of personal photography and/or Periscope type streaming within my establishment. If I were running a restaurant, I wouldn't have a problem with the incessant photographing of food that some people seem unable to resist engaging in. That's free promotion. And I wouldn't mind the occasional family portrait and so on. I just don't want flashing lights going off every 25 seconds and spoiling the ambience of the room.
Also on a personal note, if I paid big money to attend a sporting event, I want to watch the event, not stream it live for others to watch.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
I wanted to play a quick game of chess online, so I went to a game site and signed up to play. Rather than getting a new game, I was somehow put into a game where I was in a bad position. I figured I was playing someone good. I was wrong. 20 moves later, he resigned. :)
I like Kate Hudson and her brother Oliver a lot, and I can see why they think of Kurt Russell as their "father." But do they need to keep blasting Bill Hudson for having abandoned them when they were young? Let go of the anger.
President Obama said, "Racism, we are not cured of it, and it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public." I don't find his use of the n-word unacceptable. But I wonder if it's fair that no previous president would have been roundly criticized for saying the same thing?
On a related topic, it's long past time to take down the Confederate flag from outside the capitol of South Carolina.
Sad to hear that Kenni Thomas Nickel has died. You may not recognize the name, but you probably saw the video. He was homeless and appeared in a video where he was given $100. Rather than use it for drinks or drugs, he bought food and shared it with other homeless people. RIP.
Sam Dekker is a rarity. A white man who is going to be selected in the NBA draft later this week. He points out that when people compare his game to that of other players, he's almost always compared to other white players. Considering how much of a minority white players are in the NBA, I find this interesting.
Read about a man who got an IRS tax refund for over $70,000 and he hadn't even filed his return yet. I wonder how many people would have just cashed the check and forgotten about it?
Now we learn that Audrey Hepburn was so very thin because she'd suffered from malnourishment during WWII. Makes total sense.
McDonald's won't comment on an on-going labor dispute involving one of its CA produce suppliers. Nor will a contractor working for McDonald's who was hired to look into the allegations. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.
When you have a case pending in criminal court for DUI, it's kind of stupid to get arrested again for the same thing, even if it is in another state. Then again, Flavor Flav isn't known for genius.
Meryl Streep wrote to every member of Congress seeking to revive the Equal Rights Amendment. Cool idea, but given the Republican majorities in both houses I don't see it getting any traction.
The pressure to get into the elite schools is so tough at one high school that one of the students there faked getting into both Stanford and Harvard on full scholarship. That's rough.
posted by me at 7:19 PM
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