Let me begin by saying that I thought Rep Heinrich put on one hell of a town hall meeting. It was carefully choreographed and went off without a hitch. No matter how one feels about health care reform, it would be difficult to find fault with the way the meeting was conducted.
Update, apparently it depends on where your seats were, link.
That said, I will lodge a complaint with respect to what he didn't do after the meeting, when members of the press had the opportunity to ask Rep Heinrich their own questions.
I asked; what is the paradigm change that will guarantee that a significant part of the federal funding for health care reform is not going to be lost to the same waste, fraud, and abuse we see in every other federal spending program?
I prefaced my question with the observation; the more money
that the federal government spends, the more money that will
be lost to waste, fraud, and abuse; by the following logic.
If the government spends one dollar, some part of that dollar will be wasted or stolen. There may be a government agency where that part is zero. There are also government programs, like the six million dollar federal grant that is at the heart of the Vigil-Giron scandal, where more than half of each dollar goes unaccounted for.
For the sake of argument, let's say that five cents of every federal dollar is wasted or stolen. If the federal government spends one dollar, you lose five cents, if the federal government spends two dollars, you lose ten cents, if the federal government spends three dollars, you lose 15 cents, ...
Or, the more money the federal government spends, the more money is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse; my original premise.
Unless there is a paradigm change, and assuming 5% loss,
if the federal government spends one trillion dollars on
health care reform, 50 billion dollars, will be wasted or stolen.
The bottom line, Heinrich spoke to no change in the paradigm. He talked about administrative overhead and some other stuff, and then ended by saying he rejected my premise.
Good work on the town hall meeting.
Not so good on how he is going to keep fifty billion tax dollars
from being wasted or stolen.
photo Mark Bralley
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Martin Heinrick dodged an important question.
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3 comments:
ched - check your decimal point ... fifty billion ...
"Unless there is a paradigm change, and assuming 5% loss,
if the federal government spends one trillion dollars on
health care reform, 5 billion dollars, will be wasted or stolen."
Right you are, too many zeros for my old eyes to sort out. Thankyou
Yeah, that's funny that Heinie rejected your premise. I was standing in line at the townhall meeting near enough to hear some government employees boasting about how little they had to do for their job. And then I get to looking at that pro-reform crowd and speculated, those are mostly government employees. Teachers. They already have taxpayer supplied health benefits. These are people that don't care about tax increases because if their tax expense goes up... they just build a consensus and raise taxes!
A lot of guys from Organize America were there. To me they looked like children. They are children! These guys have never had a job or paid taxes! Their advocacy is going to land them some sweet recommendation for a sweet cush sinecure.
So one of Heinie's arguments was that costs would be reduced by hugely increasing the pool. How stupid is that! Guys that can't afford nothing as it is are going are going to come to the pool bringing more than they take? Righto!
Sometimes I think I would like some reform. But the government that just got done throwing trillions into the air is now telling me he knows something about efficiency and cost cutting!
I think it is all about useless sappy little unemployable turd looking at insurance companies and imagining that they could sit in those chair at those desks only it could be a "government business"
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