Hypocrisy and Right vs. Left Wing

[SoCalRC]

If 50% of disability claims were fraudulent I would see reasons for revamping the systme but if it’s only 10% do we cut back the program for the 90% that truly need it and are using it efficiently? No. Go after the 10% and use the extra savings for the remaining 90. Because those who are legitimately disabled still cannot possibly survive off of the current system.

It always amazes me that massive fraud in, say, providing body armor, food, and water, to soldiers in Iraq is acceptable, since, obviously, we have to have national defense. But any fraud, on a tiny sliver of our social spending, is suddenly proof positive that something must go.

I would have thought that, from a Christian perspective, a rudimentary support structure for the disabled would be an expected criteria for Matt 25, when nations are called before the Son of Man.

Similiarly, I would have thought that any democracy would be interested in fair and fraud free elections, but I notice that, despite previous bipartisan support, the GOP caucus and the White House just blocked the “Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act”. Doesn’t it say something disturbing to all Americans when any party fights against trackable, fair elections?

 

[SoCalRC]

No, I start with the data and follow it to the conclusion to which it points. You may find that strange, I know.

How does it fit the points? Poverty continues down, for years, then flattens. When the policies are defunded, poverty goes up.

You are now waving your arms and talking about ‘lag’, but can you demonstrate, quantifiy, or in any way measure such a phenomena? Using the same reasoning, I could assert that we have ‘proof’ that poverty is the result of the Kennedy tax cut.

Nor do I snidely accuse you of things like “thinking like a protestant.”

It is not an accusation, just an observation. If you assert a point of view and I demonstrate that it is a view widely held by Evangelical Protestants, but not held by the Church (ex. we strive to be poor in spirit and our religious priests take a vow of poverty, you proclaim that poverty is laziness and wealth a measure of virtue), I am noting, not accusing. You are, after all, the one supporting your views.

I have proposed the theory that it is the immersion in Evangelical Protestant thought in right wing politics that plays a role in shaping such beliefs. But I have always held it to be a theory, not demonstrated fact. You may have reasoned your departures from Catholic doctrine wholly on your own.

 

[vern_humphrey]

How does it fit the points? Poverty continues down, for years, then flattens. When the policies are defunded, poverty goes up.

Except that’s not what the data shows. Pooverty goes down sharply, the policies are put in place, the decline stops, and poverty remains static, between 11 and 15%, up a tick, down a tick.

You can’t show a correlation between “defunding” and the minor fluctuations in the poverty rate.

You are now waving your arms and talking about ‘lag’, but can you demonstrate, quantifiy, or in any way measure such a phenomena? Using the same reasoning, I could assert that we have ‘proof’ that poverty is the result of the Kennedy tax cut.

I sure can – did you look at the data presented here?

It is not an accusation, just an observation.

It’s an accusation – you just don’t have the courage to stand by it.

If you assert a point of view and I demonstrate that it is a view widely held by Evangelical Protestants, but not held by the Church (ex. we strive to be poor in spirit and our religious priests take a vow of poverty, you proclaim that poverty is laziness and wealth a measure of virtue), I am noting, not accusing. You are, after all, the one supporting your views.

You can quote a post of mine where I said “poverty is laziness?”

I have proposed the theory that it is the immersion in Evangelical Protestant thought in right wing politics that plays a role in shaping such beliefs. But I have always held it to be a theory, not demonstrated fact. You may have reasoned your departures from Catholic doctrine wholly on your own.

As opposed to immersion in left wing politics that could lead to such things as voting for pro-choice politicians, being bigotted against hillbillies, and claiming the Catechism is just a “crib sheet?”

 

[BamaRider]

Jimbo has this legitmate concern-

If 50% of disability claims were fraudulent I would see reasons for revamping the systme but if it’s only 10% do we cut back the program for the 90% that truly need it and are using it efficiently? No. Go after the 10% and use the extra savings for the remaining 90. Because those who are legitimately disabled still cannot possibly survive off of the current system.

The 10% is what they *admit *to, and based soley on empirical evidence of my 26 years in the fire dept in which I was called upon to transport and aid some of these “disabled” and observing my surroundings for 20 years in a ghetto fire station, I’m gonna say that number is waaaaaaay more than 10%. Now it is MY opinion that the varying degrees of fraud are close to 50%, at least in my part of the world. For crying out loud I knew pimps in the ghettos that drew a disability, how do I know? Because after they were wounded on the streets, by another pimp or drug dealer, I got called to come fix them up and transport them to the hospital, and the bill was paid by medicaid disablity, now you tell me what’s goin on. And that is a common as not in the ghettos.

This statement is entirely accurate-

Because those who are legitimately disabled still cannot possibly survive off of the current system.

Anyone trying to get by on such a check is gonna have a hard time, where are these people’s family?

The reason I had private disablitiy insurance while I was working- not gonna put MY future in the hands of the govt, but I had to pay for it, imagine that.

And nobody has said how they like my new avatar.

 

[ribozyme]

Yeah I do own my own home. Paid for, and lived in it for 31 years. So I no longer have the mortgage interest deduction. And in your world the deduction is govt handout?? The fact the govt allows a working middle class guy, to make a deduction to keep more of the money HE earned is a handout??? How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Do you think the EITC is a handout?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Do you think the EITC is a handout?

I think a lot of people around here – such many who work in the nursing home where my wife is ADON – know to the penny how much they can make and still qualify for the EITC, and quit work when they reach that point.

 

[BamaRider]

Ribo asked-

Do you think the EITC is a handout?

Yes, anytime a guy gets a tax refund of more then he paid IN, something is not right.

I think a lot of people around here – such many who work in the nursing home where my wife is ADON – know to the penny how much they can make and still qualify for the EITC, and quit work when they reach that point

No they don’t??

 

[Ridgerunner]

that caused it.

However, I think a few do still seem to have merit. For example, Medicare has, until the disasterous Bush/GOP Plan D, has outperformed the private medical system in terms of cost control and administrative overhead. .

I disagree. Private insurers generally pay less, often a lot less, than does Medicare, for the very same thing. I work with people who negotiate provider contracts, and used to negotiate them myself. Never did I, or anyone I know, ever fail to get substantial discounts from Medicare rate across the board. And the providers are happy enough to get it. Medicare doesn’t do its own cost control. That function is “farmed out” to private companies, though pricing is not.

And, on that subject, Social Security Disability determinations are also “farmed out” to others. If the applicant is denied, he can appeal and have a hearing before an independant administrative law judge. At that level, decisions are actually based on the testimony of “vocational experts” who compare the seeming abilities of the claimant with the Dictionary of Occupational Titles or a computerized version of it. The descriptions in it are, in my opinion and experience, very general, and often quite wrong, describing jobs as much more demanding than they really are. Forces, frequencies and postures are not at all up to date with common ergonomic practices, and do not take the “reasonable accommodation” mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act into account at all. The major “fact” relied on in the determination, then, is often wildly inaccurate. If denied there, he can appeal to the U.S. District Court. At no point does SSA itself determine who gets benefits and who does not.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Oh yes. I might add that no representative of SSA appears at the initial determination or at the hearing before the administrative law judge. Only the claimant, his witnesses, if any, and the “vocational expert” appear.

 

[BamaRider]

Well glad to see the RidgeRunner step in and set the record straight. Some folks think they can just come on here and make all kinds of crazy claims and expect to go unchallenged.

When ya do, you’ll most likely get “well you don’t understand what ya just read,” (Vern gets that all the time).

 

[goofyjim]

Jimbo has this legitmate concern-

The 10% is what they *admit *to, and based soley on empirical evidence of my 26 years in the fire dept in which I was called upon to transport and aid some of these “disabled” and observing my surroundings for 20 years in a ghetto fire station, I’m gonna say that number is waaaaaaay more than 10%. Now it is MY opinion that the varying degrees of fraud are close to 50%, at least in my part of the world. For crying out loud I knew pimps in the ghettos that drew a disability, how do I know? Because after they were wounded on the streets, by another pimp or drug dealer, I got called to come fix them up and transport them to the hospital, and the bill was paid by medicaid disablity, now you tell me what’s goin on. And that is a common as not in the ghettos.

This statement is entirely accurate-

Anyone trying to get by on such a check is gonna have a hard time, where are these people’s family?

The reason I had private disablitiy insurance while I was working- not gonna put MY future in the hands of the govt, but I had to pay for it, imagine that.

And nobody has said how they like my new avatar.

But who is determine what a legit disability is. Under your factors you might have told me, who suffers from schizophrenia, well just get out and work it off. Or you might tell a depressed person just get over it when depression does have a clinical basis. And again you are claiming that 50% are fraudulent with absolutely no stats to bakc it up. Agreed the stats may show 10% of claims are fraudulent but this 50% figure is a number to just get emotional over and say scrap the system with no plan for anything else in place for those who truly need it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

But who is determine what a legit disability is. Under your factors you might have told me, who suffers from schizophrenia, well just get out and work it off. Or you might tell a depressed person just get over it when depression does have a clinical basis. And again you are claiming that 50% are fraudulent with absolutely no stats to bakc it up. Agreed the stats may show 10% of claims are fraudulent but this 50% figure is a number to just get emotional over and say scrap the system with no plan for anything else in place for those who truly need it.

Psych disability claims are the easiest of all to make. Supposedly “objective” because disability factors are placed on a “grid”, the position on the “grid” is the purely subjective judgment of a psychologist or psychiatrist. Sigificant effect on two or more of a number of categories, or profound effect on one, and the administrative law judge has no choice but to find in favor of the claimant. Typically, the only evidence at the hearing is that of the claimant’s expert. Typically, SSA has no lawyer at the hearing and no expert of its own.

Knowing, as I do, a substantial number of people on SSD, it would be my observation that a good number in excess of 10% can actually work. Outright “fraud” in the sense of not being disabled at all is not so much the source of overinclusion, as is the level of disability that is considered “total”. There is a significant level of “fraud” in the sense that recipients of SSD often work in the “shadow economy” for cash. There is also an assumption that work history determines disability. If a person’s work history includes only industrial labor, for example, no consideration is given to the possibility that such person may be quite intelligent and have managerial abilities that have never been used, or have been used but are not recognized in the job “classifications” for what he has done in the past. That, in itself, is not “fraud” in the sense of claimant deception. The system deceives itself.

But the real injustice in all of it is the level of benefits for people who do not have sufficient “quarters” (quarter years) of work paid into the social security system. Such people receive, at best, SSI, which is a paltry benefit. (About $500/month the last I knew) Ironically, such people are usuallly the ones who are the most disabled, having spotty and unsuccessful work histories, or none at all. Mentally retarded people, former homemakers and people with chronic illnesses are heavily represented in those ranks. SSI is “means tested”, unlike SSD. So a person on SSI is severely limited in what he/she can own, whereas SSD can be received by a person with significant earning assets, and often is. Bill Gates would be disqualified from receiving SSI, but not the much higher SSD.

Never have I heard a political candidate (including all those now running) address that inequity. That’s one reason why I am so skeptical of Dem claims of “being for the poor” or such things. Year after year, through Dem and Repub congresses and presidencies, the inequity continues. It is probably the most obvious of all social justice issues, and the easiest to fix. But nobody even talks about it. My suspicion is that is because there are few SSI recipients who vote. The political emphasis is all on middle class welfare, because there are a lot of potential votes when you tell the middle class you are going to give them something for “free” (i.e., paid for by somebody else) that they could pay for, albeit perhaps with difficulty at times. In my opinion, that is profoundly corrupting to a society, The fact that political candidates run on middle class welfare concepts (usually quite vague) and succeed doing it, tells me the society is pretty far down that road.

 

[SoCalRC]

I disagree. Private insurers generally pay less, often a lot less, than does Medicare, for the very same thing. I work with people who negotiate provider contracts, and used to negotiate them myself. Never did I, or anyone I know, ever fail to get substantial discounts from Medicare rate across the board. And the providers are happy enough to get it. Medicare doesn’t do its own cost control. That function is “farmed out” to private companies, though pricing is not.

Then why does Medicare outperform the private sector in terms of care provided vs. dollars spent?

It is actually pretty startling when you think about it. The system itself is, as the GAO puts it “high risk” for fraud and abuse. It also takes on the most expensive segment of the population to insure. Yet, it is the private health care insurance providers that are spending 1/3 of their care dollars on admiistration.

It also does not appear to be a fluke, look at Canada’s National Health care system. It is essentially 10 regional government insurance plans. Doctors are still private sector, and the 10 ‘pools’ are miniscule by US standards - yet, WHO ranks Canada 30th in care and outcome, we’re 37th, and we spend several orders of magnitude more, however you measure it (per patient, percentage of GDP, etc.).

 

[BamaRider]

Thanks to the RidgeRunner, I learned alot about the system in post #509 that I didn’t know before.

It only confirms what I always suspected- a bad system.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Then why does Medicare outperform the private sector in terms of care provided vs. dollars spent?

It doesn’t. Medicare juggles statistics to make it look that way, but in actuality you have to count costs on both sides of the ledger – Medicare throws the administrative costs on the provider, in order to make itself look good.

Nor is there any measure of the quality of care factored in.

 

[goofyjim]

Psych disability claims are the easiest of all to make. Supposedly “objective” because disability factors are placed on a “grid”, the position on the “grid” is the purely subjective judgment of a psychologist or psychiatrist. Sigificant effect on two or more of a number of categories, or profound effect on one, and the administrative law judge has no choice but to find in favor of the claimant. Typically, the only evidence at the hearing is that of the claimant’s expert. Typically, SSA has no lawyer at the hearing and no expert of its own.

Knowing, as I do, a substantial number of people on SSD, it would be my observation that a good number in excess of 10% can actually work. Outright “fraud” in the sense of not being disabled at all is not so much the source of overinclusion, as is the level of disability that is considered “total”. There is a significant level of “fraud” in the sense that recipients of SSD often work in the “shadow economy” for cash. There is also an assumption that work history determines disability. If a person’s work history includes only industrial labor, for example, no consideration is given to the possibility that such person may be quite intelligent and have managerial abilities that have never been used, or have been used but are not recognized in the job “classifications” for what he has done in the past. That, in itself, is not “fraud” in the sense of claimant deception. The system deceives itself.

But the real injustice in all of it is the level of benefits for people who do not have sufficient “quarters” (quarter years) of work paid into the social security system. Such people receive, at best, SSI, which is a paltry benefit. (About $500/month the last I knew) Ironically, such people are usuallly the ones who are the most disabled, having spotty and unsuccessful work histories, or none at all. Mentally retarded people, former homemakers and people with chronic illnesses are heavily represented in those ranks. SSI is “means tested”, unlike SSD. So a person on SSI is severely limited in what he/she can own, whereas SSD can be received by a person with significant earning assets, and often is. Bill Gates would be disqualified from receiving SSI, but not the much higher SSD.

Never have I heard a political candidate (including all those now running) address that inequity. That’s one reason why I am so skeptical of Dem claims of “being for the poor” or such things. Year after year, through Dem and Repub congresses and presidencies, the inequity continues. It is probably the most obvious of all social justice issues, and the easiest to fix. But nobody even talks about it. My suspicion is that is because there are few SSI recipients who vote. The political emphasis is all on middle class welfare, because there are a lot of potential votes when you tell the middle class you are going to give them something for “free” (i.e., paid for by somebody else) that they could pay for, albeit perhaps with difficulty at times. In my opinion, that is profoundly corrupting to a society, The fact that political candidates run on middle class welfare concepts (usually quite vague) and succeed doing it, tells me the society is pretty far down that road.

So are you claiming they don’t exist? Think again. They have a chemical basis and why in the world would anybody deliberately want to be relegated to second class which is so often done with those who have a psych disability. You have to be crazy (pardon the pun) to want to be identified as crazy.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Then why does Medicare outperform the private sector in terms of care provided vs. dollars spent?

It is actually pretty startling when you think about it. The system itself is, as the GAO puts it “high risk” for fraud and abuse. It also takes on the most expensive segment of the population to insure. Yet, it is the private health care insurance providers that are spending 1/3 of their care dollars on admiistration.

It also does not appear to be a fluke, look at Canada’s National Health care system. It is essentially 10 regional government insurance plans. Doctors are still private sector, and the 10 ‘pools’ are miniscule by US standards - yet, WHO ranks Canada 30th in care and outcome, we’re 37th, and we spend several orders of magnitude more, however you measure it (per patient, percentage of GDP, etc.).

You can cite whatever source you want, but I know for an absolute fact that insurers can and usually do, get significant discounts from Medicare rate for the very same treatments and procedures. As I said, I have negotiated them myself, code by code. High risk has nothing to do with the cost per code. I also know that Medicare “farms out” claims administration to private insurance companies. I have worked out claims disputes and setoffs with Medicare myself, and that’s who you deal with administratively, not the government. If Medicare administration is less expensive than some group of private insurers, it is because Medicare chooses effective private insurers to do the work.

I know you will take offense, and I regret that, but I would not believe WHO’s judgment of anything affecting the U.S. But even if I believed this 30/37 th business, there are signficant differences between the populations of the U.S. and that of Canada. I have certainly heard of Canadians coming to the U.S. for care. Never have I heard of anyone going from the U.S. to Canada in the belief that they could obtain better care; certainly not quicker.

 

[goofyjim]

Back to the thread I have seen hypocrisy from the right and the left. I have demonstrated twice in these forums where someone said one thing one time and another thing the next. Then they go back and apply some principle to state they didn’t really mean what they said the first time. Then state your true opinion the first time. In other words don’t try to sound more intelligent just to confuse people. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Back to the thread I have seen hypocrisy from the right and the left. I have demonstrated twice in these forums where someone said one thing one time and another thing the next. Then they go back and apply some principle to state they didn’t really mean what they said the first time. Then state your true opinion the first time. In other words don’t try to sound more intelligent just to confuse people. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Agreed, Jim, and I don’t dispute what you have seen. But one has to consider the possibility that sometimes people might change their minds about something in the course of participating in these threads.

 

[SoCalRC]

It doesn’t. Medicare juggles statistics to make it look that way, but in actuality you have to count costs on both sides of the ledger – Medicare throws the administrative costs on the provider, in order to make itself look good.

So, the GAO, the CBO, and various watchdog groups all conspire?

Nor is there any measure of the quality of care factored in.

So you are saying that Ridgerunner is incorrect? If Medicare is paying more for services than private insurance, wouldn’t the doctors and hospitals, which are for profit entities, prefer Medicare cases then?

Or are you saying that the free market does not work?