When Bachmann was asked repeatedly by Anderson Cooper what part of the federal budget she intended to cut, she responded with this:
On Wednesday, Bachmann repeated the claim on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” “Within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day,” Bachmann told Cooper. “He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting out over 870 rooms in India. And these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending. It’s a very small example, Anderson.”
Unsurprisingly and completely consistent with her history, she lied:
The only problem: The claims appear to be wrong.
Conservatives can’t answer Cooper’s question, of course, because they didn’t run on conservatism, they ran on opposition to cuts in the most out-of-control expensive entitlement program, which is Medicare Advantage.
Anyone who read a piece of direct mail from Crossroads GPS or saw a campaign commercial in Ohio, or Florida, or Wisconsin knows this, and lots and lots of senior citizens read a piece of direct mail from Crossroads GPS, and saw those campaign commercials.
Medicare Advantage is the privatized portion of Medicare, and it costs more than the public program, which is why Democrats sensibly and responsibly cut it.
By doing that, Democrats shored up the public Medicare program, and extended health insurance to millions.
Conservatives ran on the unlimited, endless expansion of the privatized portion of an entitlement program. Medicare Advantage has been an absolute failure at slowing Medicare costs. It failed. That’s what they ran on, preserving that failure. Not conservatism. Medicare Advantage.
Which is why none of them will answer that question, and why Bachmann (along with Drudge, FOX and Rush) spread the lie about the India trip.
Do you think media will continue to ask the question, or will a series of transparent deflections like Bachmann’s work? If the media mouthpieces yell “look over there!” every day, will anyone pursue the question conservatives can’t answer?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Pelosi is running to be Minority Leader!! Wahhooooo!! Suck it, Heath Shuler!!
MattF
I saw the Bachmann-Cooper video on LGF, and it was pretty scary. If someone looking like Bachmann walked into a hospital emergency room, she’d be forcibly sedated.
lamh32
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Nancy will damn sure get shit done even as Minority Leader. Boehner will have to deal with Nancy SMASH, and Nancy ain’t scared of Boner!! Any other Minority leader will be nothing but a push-over, except maybe Barney Frank and Rep Clyburn, but ain’t no way Barney or Clyburn will ever be elected.
I do not want Hoyer or one of the Blue dogs…period.
And let be honest, even if she doesn’t become Minority Leader, the GOP would still use her as a foil.
Besides, I just don’t see Pelosi deciding to run for MInority Leader if she doesn’t think that she’s already got it in the bag.
We need Nancy knocking heads now more than ever, since we are no longer in the Majority. Nancy seems like the ONLY one who can do that and who has a credible chance of being elected.
p.a.
I saw Teabagger-elect (N.J. or Pa.) John Runyan, former Eagle offensive lineman (who apparently didn’t always wear his helmet) duck the same questions, but pledge to cut (with a snigger) the $$$ for scientific inquiry into the reproductive system of fruit flies. The interviewer (can’t remember, CNN or Faux), just accepted his answer. Of course, the facts that fruit flies cause millions in crop damage each year, and that the research could lead to better pest control, were never brought up.
artem1s
“He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting out over 870 rooms in India. And these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.
gotta ask, how many of these mythical 2,000 are members of the village? half? a quarter? hope the WH travel office books them at the Motel 6.
El Cid
I heard some piece of shit right wing radio show at night (some forgettable right wing host) and he and a caller — maybe some ‘expert’ — were complaining about this bullshit. First of all, it’s obvious from the god-damned start that there is no fucking way you can spend $200 million per day on a trip and not produce golden skyscrapers and make every single headline in India about how this massive boost to the GDP just appeared over a few days.
Anyway, the piece of shit and his asshole caller / conservative pundit went on to mock the idea with disgusting snickering that Obama might eat a lot of curry and that he might attend a Hindu ceremony of elaborate display.
What a loathsome bunch of narrow minded, ethnosectarian hateful race-baiting bastards.
I hope that they are of great value to their families, because as far as their public existence goes, the world would be a much better place if they just vanished into a puff of brimstone smoke.
Mark
The 200 million figure for the trip came from India. 200M rupees is about 4.5 million US, which is about the same price tag as other presidential trips of this nature.
Remember Bachmann is innumerate as well as illiterate and insane: it’s probably just an exchange rate mix-up.
dr. bloor
Being the readily-conditioned Pavlovian dogs that they are, the media will quickly be trained to not bother with substantive questions like that, resulting in a progressively lower bar for fascist thugs like Bachmann to hurdle to appear “statesmanlike” and “reasonable.”
Remember when all Reagan had to do was stay awake and all W had to do was spit out a coherent sentence to be deemed authoritative and presidential?
p.a.
@lamh32:
They do that no matter who the Maj/Min Leader was/is. Just create a generic scary liberal foil. Getting their followers to soil themselves has been their m.o. since, well since the Red Scare, really.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@lamh32: You are right. Pelosi isn’t going to run unless she has it in the bag. Now, we have to work to further defang asshats like Heath Shuler and Steny Hoyer(because Shuler is Hoyer’s stalking horse).
cleek
no.
for the same reason the press didn’t bother telling people that Obama lowered their taxes: there’s no upside to correcting the GOP, only pain.
eemom
I know from a terrible experience my mother had some years back what a total fucking fraud Medicare “Advantage” is.
I am so tired of idiots who swallow lies like fish on hooks. So very, very tired. It doesn’t excuse the liars themselves, of course, but honestly my disgust for the stupid saps that are my fellow citizens is so intense it is giving me heartburn. Nobody has the RIGHT to be that stupid.
Kay
@p.a.:
It’s bullshit. That’s a discretionary item in the budget. No real money there.
Medicare (and the nursing home part of Medicaid) is the budget-buster, and Medicare Advantage (a conservative, market-based ‘solution’) is bleeding the public programs dry.
timb
O/T, but, when I listened to Rush today, he was giddy about hearings in the House. know what I didn’t hear him say? “We need to look forward rather than back.”
We have an ex-President admitting he ordered torture and we are not supposed to look back. We have a majority of one half of one branch who wants to hold hearings about who bowed to whom and who read what before healthcare was passed (of course, Limbaugh then lied about govt power vis a vis insurance, which is a lie so huge it makes wonder just how much contempt he has for his audience)! Is the media gonna ask that question about these sideshows?
I won’t hold my breath
Martin
Medicare Advantage is unnecessarily expensive, and the cuts do save money, but that’s not where the big entitlement savings come from. That’s where the early entitlement savings come from (starting next year), but they’re much smaller than what will happen after 2014.
The big savings come from keeping people from deferring health care until they get on Medicare/Medicaid. That’s a big reason why we lag in life expectancy (some people die before they get on the program) and why our costs are so high (from the individual’s perspective it’s cheaper to go from 63 to 65 without treating that heart condition with medication than it is to wait and just get bypass surgery once Medicare kicks in).
The real entitlement savings come from reversing this trend – getting people covered so they treat conditions when they develop. That’s what the mandate is all about – forcing people to pay $5,000 from their own earnings to fix their heart rather than waiting and asking the taxpayer to pay $50,000. Even if the government needs to subsidize that $5,000, they come out *way* ahead. There’s a similar thing going on with Medicaid where people are ineligible for too long after losing work and defer treatment until they qualify for the programs. That too has been addressed – and the process has been substantially simplified which should also reduce administrative costs a fair bit.
Reducing the % of GDP spent on health care is a different dynamic also handled by ACA, using different mechanisms.
trollhattan
If you love popcorn, there’s a fun blogfight thread over at TBogg’s place on this very topic.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/11/04/pop-up-punditry/
Also, too, Bachmann’s got ambition! A big future to go along with it? Maybe not.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2013348758_apusboehnerbachmann.html
wilfred
Surely this is the most over-determined election cycle in the history of American politics. Does it matter what these people ran on? They could have had a platform of sterilizing Martian hamsters for fuck’s sake and it would have made the same difference.
Market capitalism is dead. The Fed just decided to print $600 billion more of worthless currency. In a year, inflation will wipe out the dollar – the last mirage of American exceptionalism – and people are talking about Obama’s trip to India. Fucking surreal.
Admiral_Komack
Pelosi To Run For Minority Leader
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/pelosi-to-run-for-minority-leader.php
ChrisS
@Mark:
Rupees, dollars, whatever, the point is that the country cannot afford to spend this kind of money on a presidential vacation when we’re so deeply in debt.
Therefore in order to jump start the economy, we should cut taxes and invade Iran.
freelancer
@Mark:
Nevermind the fact that if the White House would have only spent $5000 on this trip thanks to a deal they got from Travelocity, the wingers would be fainting because Obama isn’t projecting American Power and American Exceptionalism enough.
Poopyman
@Mark: Thanks, Mark. That makes perfect sense.
Was it down-blog here that somebody posted that the war in Afghanistan is costing $190M per day? You would think a MSM reporter would have that nugget in his/her noggin. But of course, you would be wrong.
Trevor B
@p.a.: While I am sure that some fruit fly research is based on this concept. Fruit flies are model genetic organisms we study them to study basic genetics. Basically any medical advance due to gene identification came out of fruit fly research. This is why scientific literacy needs to be taught in schools
Bulworth
@p.a.: Just what we need: another meathead in Congress.
Resident Firebagger
The best thing about the India lie: It “only” costs us $190M a day to be in Afghanistan.
Oops. Someone beat me to that.
eemom
re Pelosi — this may sound odd, but dearly as I love her, she is causing me serious problems with Thanksgiving. The reason is that I have an utterly moronic sister in law who keeps posting stupid gloaty shit about Pelosi’s loss of the speakership on her stupid FB page, which keeps showing up on MY FB page, along with the still more moronic comments of her fellow teatards…….and I SO wanna tell her what a fucking idiot she is……but I can’t, cuz I gotta deal with her at thxgiving.
Fuck family harmony.
: (
Martin
@Mark: Great, now in addition to her saying that we’re spending $200M per day on the trip, she’ll accuse Obama of wanting to switch the US currency to the Rupee.
morzer
It seems that the GOP is renewing its perennial struggle between the Arseheads and the Buffoons. Luckily the Moron Media will save us all from this distressing spectacle.
Kay
@Martin:
Great points as usual, Martin, but I’m not sure that I buy this:
It makes sense, but I’ve never seen anything that really shows it. If you have something, please link. I read the administration’s justification, but I didn’t think it was all that persuasive.
I’m just not sure that the ridiculous amount we spend in the last year of life has anything to do with overall health. It’s just amazing how much of Medicare goes to that last year.
Mark S.
@Mark:
Why does this not surprise me in the least?
Ezra:
I knew Medicare Advantage was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad. I really despair for this country. It’s not just the 30% that are batshit insane; it’s the 90% that are just too ignorant to have any idea what would actually help or hurt the country. I don’t expect everyone to be a policy wonk like Ezra Klein, but knowing that the federal budget isn’t analogous to a family budget or that only 15% of the budget is non-defense discretionary would be nice.
Bulworth
But, but, but, but Pelosi Libruls just lost the House by 1000 votes and American People have spoken and Liberal Liberal Liberal.
Citizen_X
@Martin: Somehow this is going to be twisted into India joining our new North American Union, and the dollar being replaced by the Rupeo.
cmorenc
The shameless capability of the GOP to spend millions$$$ in advertising, and shout through their Faux News and talk-show megaphones, to spread counterfactual propagandistic bullshit is the biggest hurdle progressives and dems face in recapturing the political initiative, aggravated by the egregious Citizens United SCt decision. There’s also the frustrating success the GOP too-often has in getting the MSM to quickly pick up and frame issues around GOP narratives, which the GOP gets for free.
Unless and until the Dems find a way to effectively counter this dynamic, they’ll face an uphill battle to regain the upper hand. The fact that so many seniors around the country were conned by outright blatant GOP lies into believing that Health Care Reform threatened their Medicare benefits, and that this demographic played such a key role in determining so many close contests (Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania…) is a key example.
BTW, it’s absolutely certain that when the 14th Amendment was being drafted and ratified during the tail end and immediate aftermath of the Civil War, neither drafters nor ratifiers had corporations in mind whatsoever. This conceit was a Gilded Age invention, the germ for which was an incorrect dictum in a footnote in a 20-years later Supreme Court decision that was spuriously added by the court’s then-clerk, contrary to the actual original draft of the decision by the Justices. The right-wing “originalist” faction on the SCt are so totally full of shit.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@wilfred:
If you don’t want your dollars, I’d be willing to take them in and give them a good home.
BDeevDad
This is a great example of the stupidity of the
voters.
Joseph Nobles
I’ll repeat here that this insidious lie is not just about slamming Obama for reckless spending (falsely). It’s about sandbagging the reason for his visit: talks with India about the future of Afghanistan. As July 2011 rolls around, expect to hear this zombie lie repeated.
P.S. How much did it cost per day to have Bush sitting next to Putin at the Beijing Olympics when Russia rolled over the Georgian border?
merrinc
I wonder if the reason why the wingers are so insistent about public displays of the Ten Commandments is because they can’t seem to fucking remember the one about not bearing false witness?
P.S. Kay: this is the first time I’ve been able to catch one of your posts before it had a 100+ comment thread so excuse my tardiness in thanking you for all your hard work in the Ohio GOTV efforts. I know the heartbreak is that much worse when you’ve poured so much of yourself into it.
morzer
@eemom:
Can’t you just say:
Dear X, you are a moral and financial imbecile – and your dipping sauce is an abomination before the Lord. I curse you and all your foul kind, and hope that a large seagull with digestive tract problems hovers over you for the remainder of your miserable life.
Look forward to seeing you at Thanksgiving!
ps. Have you decided which of your SS uniforms to wear?
Bulworth
Hey, indeed.
Kay
@eemom:
I have an utterly moronic sister in law too, and she trapped me on a summer vacation. She drinks too much, though, so it was like shooting fish in a barrel on con law, so I went to bed. I’m not walking her through the First Amendment when her eyes won’t track. Too easy.
I was a model of restraint.
Bulworth
@morzer: Can you just stay home on Thanksgiving and watch football?
Napoleon
@wilfred:
Well at least now we know wilfred isn’t Kthug.
mclaren
The most out-of-control expensive entitlement program is the U.S. military. Incompetent cowardly generals think they’re entitled to lose an endless number of wars and kill an endless number of American kids with no consequences.
Shut ’em down. Reduce the U.S. military to the Coast Guard, a couple squadrons of fighter planes, and a 30,000 man army. Junk the rest.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
I gotta say, the amount of fail on the India story and how widely it was held up by pundits made me super happy.
P.S. why is the conservative media so enthralled with overseas trips by this president and the first lady? I think every time Obama has had a foreign trip, there’s been some nontroversy.
jayboat
Has MSNBC lost their freaking minds?
PeakVT
@wilfred: In a year, inflation will wipe out the dollar
No, no it won’t.
Napoleon
Olbermann has been suspended by MSNBC.
morzer
@Bulworth:
Well, it would mean cancelling my world tour….
Lurker
@eemom:
You have my sympathies.
Hang in there. Things will get better.
Calouste
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel has 560 rooms, so I guess they have it temporarily and magically expanded by more than 50% to 870 rooms?
Room rates start at about $300/night and go up to $3870/night for the Grand Luxury Suite.
So even if there were 870 rooms at $3870/night, it would only come to 3.4 million per night, and the real number (before discounts) would closer to $300,000/night.
gbear
Michele Bachmann won the battle. Crazy is king. She won’t be contested anywhere in the media. We are going to be buried in garbage and lies for at least the next two years.
lamh32
@Napoleon:
Whoa.
Here’s the link
chopper
@Martin:
the funny thing is it’s such a huge, over-the-top big lie that the rubes will drink it right up. she should have gone full retard and made it an even billion.
Kay
@merrinc:
I lose all the time in my work, it’s the nature of the beast, so I’m used to it. It sucks, but what’s the alternative?
That was tough, though, honestly. I am incapable of not getting over-involved once I’m in, and I stopped fighting that a long time ago. It has benefits, along with a downside. I’m horribly disappointed a lot, but also wonderfully elated every once in a while.
Sentient Puddle
A link for Olbermann story, since nobody has gotten it right as I post this.
chopper
so it’s 200 million rupees? jesus, bachmann doesn’t even know her own country’s fucking currency.
Davis X. Machina
A reading from the Gospel of St. Ronald:
“Everything private is better than anything public, and so long as one of us, anywhere, is covered by a collective bargaining agreeement, none of us, anywhere, is truly free.”
Here endeth the lesson.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cmorenc:
At some point the American people just plain have to decide to work smarter not harder – i.e. stop being so willing to work longer hours than their peers in other OECD countries but being intellectually lazy, ignorant and grossly misinformed by a media which doesn’t have their best interests at heart. Otherwise, American Empire, RIP. In the long run you can’t run a superpower on the backs of a bunch of ignorant peasants. And that is what the US middle class is turning into – peasants – with their own self-inflicted ignorance playing a large role in the process. What a sad fate for a country with a proud tradition of both formal public education and self-education. Lincoln would not be pleased with what we hath wrought from the union he saved.
morzer
@chopper:
Can’t the Dems offer a bill forbidding Bachmann from establishing the rupee as our currency?
Ruckus
@El Cid:
I hope that they are of great value to their families, because as far as their public existence goes, the world would be a much better place if they just vanished into a puff of brimstone smoke.
The world would be better served if they were hung from lampposts and left for a few days. Or their heads arrayed on a row of pikes. And left for days.
lamh32
@Napoleon:
I’ve read some reports that it may have to do with Olbermann donating to Dem candidates.
And who broke that story: Politico. They inquired through information act to get the info.
Hum…I wonder what little birdie twirped into their ears…
chopper
@Sentient Puddle:
i’m sure there’ll be crickets outta the right over this violation of a journalist’s first amendment rights.
artem1s
also.too.never ever mention that the big business mindset was to throw $140M at a campaign in CA which failed. Not to mention the other $M/B spend nationally to take back the House. yes, business persons are sooooooo much more fiscally responsible that government persons and are somehow going to find the restraint button the minute they are sworn into office.
catclub
@Mark:
“it’s probably just an exchange rate mix-up. ”
When all your mistakes are biased in one direction, they aren’t mistakes.
When she says she was suprised to find out the trip was only costing $80,000 per day, or they misidentify a democrat
doing a perp walk as a republican, let me know.
HyperIon
Nice post, Kay.
I saw that idiot Dick Armey on C-SPAN last night complaining (almost vociferously) that the Tea People do not understand how the game is played. When they lose in the primary, they are supposed to endorse the winner and yet many times they did not! The nerve!
Of course, he had no response when someone mentioned Lisa Murkowski. Anyway it was strange to hear him criticizing the movement he encouraged originally. Yes, the elephants control the House…but can they control themselves?
The other question is: when will voters catch on to the bait-and-switch the Rs are planning?
chopper
@morzer:
exactly. no sharia law, no rupees neither.
elm
@wilfred:
Oh noes! The sky is falling! Look at these disastrous headlines: US: Core inflation the lowest since 1966
Have fun stocking up on gold, canned goods, toilet paper, and ammunition.
Lets meet up here on November 4, 2011 and see what’s happened.
Napoleon
@lamh32:
Thats it – BTW just read his suspension is indefinitely.
Here is the by the seat of my pants wild ass theory I have. He knew the rule and he intentionally violated it on the theory that 1) NBC/GE are likely secretly funding part of the rights attack ads so wouldn’t dare fire him or 2) if they fired him he would sue NBC and seek to discover NBC and GE’s secret contributions to the right.
You Don't Say
@trollhattan: What utter silliness.
Well, the Republican media elite knives are out for Palin, maybe they’ll get sharpened up for Bachmann too.
ChrisS
@Sentient Puddle:
“MSNBC has cast itself as a liberal alternative to the conservative Fox News channel”
In my best Chris Griffin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvz_3ddC-MA): WHAAAAAT
Morning Joe is so fucking liberal, it’s awful.
Fox donates$2 million to the GOP and it’s well, money is speech, and Olbermann donates $7,500 and it’s a fucking travesty.
You Don't Say
@lamh32: I read Olbermann disclosed it as well, but maybe that was only after Politico story.
eemom
@Napoleon:
Olbermann v. NBC…..woohoo, talk about popcorn.
This just might be the straw that sends Bob Somerby permanently into orbit.
licensed to kill time
The sad and infuriating thing about this is that no amount of fact-checking or accurate reporting would do a thing to change the minds of people who swallow this stuff. They know in their guts that it’s true, because ultimately they don’t think Obama has any right to be President, much less take fancy-schmancy trips abroad.
Facts and figures don’t matter to them. They believe, therefore it’s true, or it oughta be. Any evidence to the contrary is explained away as “lamestream media” bias.
In other words, “lalalala they can’t hear you!”
Kay
@HyperIon:
Never? People here told me the new Ohio governor was going to repeal the state income tax. Yay! Free services! It’s 44% of the state budget. The day after he was elected, conservatives in the state legislature put the kibosh on that.
I mean, Jesus. Use your head, voters. Where was he going to get 44% of the budget? Out of his ass?
Ruckus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Yes, share please.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ChrisS:
Money is speech only for corporations. People don’t have rights – they have obligations.
chopper
@Mark S.:
next you’re going to tell me that it’s stupid to try to tell the president how to run the war in afghanistan based on my experience playing paintball on the weekends. fuck that.
ChrisS
@Kay:
Where was he going to get 44% of the budget? Out of his ass?
Well if they just cut welfare, schools, and medicare, they’d have more than enough money to cut the income tax.
Of course, no conservative will ever actually vote to do such a thing.
themann1086
@p.a.: New Jersey. As an Eagles fan, his teabaggery is just depressing.
Taking cheap shots at scientific endeavors is a right-wing tradition, of course.
Sentient Puddle
Yeah, there’s a pretty fucking huge double standard happening here with the Olbermann suspension. That or everybody has just internalized the notion that Fox is so goddamned far to the right that when the $1 million RGA donation story broke, the reaction was more “Wait, they didn’t donate more?”
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Napoleon: I’ll confess — I really doubt he had an overarching plan, here. Part of that, I confess, is my growing distaste for Olbermann as someone on “my side”. I think he’s not nearly as bad as Rush et. al., yet he’s felt, over the last couple of years, like someone who’s taking himself too seriously in ways that were detriments to his oft-valid points.
This act seems, to me, of a piece with that view from him, that his moral compass is so strong it need not be checked in any serious way.
wilfred
@elm:
Ok, you’ve got a date.
Kay
@ChrisS:
I think that’s part of the Big Lie, too. As has been extensively documented, year after year after year, conservatives don’t balance budgets. They shift money around.
lamh32
@You Don’t Say:
It was after the Politco story. Olbermann gave a statement to Politico.
Politco “discovered” the contributions from Federal Election filings.
I’m know conspiracy theorist, but why exactly would Politco be looking at Raul Grivalja’s contributions.
They got a tip
Jamie
If this doesn’t cause Pelosi her job, what would?
lamh32
Atrios twitter
You Don't Say
@lamh32: Absolutely.
What does everything think of this exchange?
Glyph_2112
OK, since the old white people love their conservatism and fear everything socialist, lets give them what they want. Cut Social Security, Medicare, Farm Subsidies, dial a ride and any other nanny state program. Then, maybe they come to the stark realization that the only programs they really wanted cut was for either the poor or the oddly colored people. By then, most of them will have died off because they couldn’t afford the medicine of the free market pharma corps.
This will then allow the younger voters and minorities to become the larger voting bloc and reinstate all the programs that actually help make this nation stronger.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Oh look. It’s “Why can’t the Democratic nominee for PotUS travel coach?” with a different hair cut.
I’m just surprised she didn’t claim he was renting out the Taj Mahal.
MikeJ
@Napoleon: So when Fox gives the Republicans million bucks that’s no big deal. A private citizen donates under the federal maximum to individual candidates, that’s a scandal.
Bulworth
This is the kind of crap I used to get from old HS friends and other assorted hangers-on, via email, until Facebook, where I can hide them or defriend them.
Jim, Once
Seems Olbermann was
fired“suspended indefinitely” ’cause he forgot to say “Captain, may I” to somebody at MSNBCbefore giving to Demo candidates. I love the idea of his doing this deliberately to uncover what his corporate masters gave.kc
The claims appear to be wrong.
“Appear to be?”
Napoleon
@lamh32:
Did it ever occur to you that the data bases could also be organized by donor? As far as I can tell I am only one of 2 people in this country, and I believe in the world, with my name and by googling my name a hit on the first page or two always is a list of political donations I made in some political cycle.
You Don't Say
Check this out.
p.a.
@Trevor B: I used crop damage as the most obvious direct economic benefit of the fruit fly research. As someone with a considerable number of wingnut relatives, if you say ‘genetic research’ they hear ‘fetus experiments/human animal hybrids’, and the crazy floodgates open.
JCT
@Kay:
Isn’t that where most of those seemingly endless supply of shiny objects to distract the masses comes from? Thank you to St. Ronnie and the endless free lunch. F-ing pathetic.
And my husband’s SIL is an imbecile as well. Breathtaking. We’ve been married for almost 25 years and I haven’t figured out how she manages to dress herself in the morning. I gave up discussing politics years ago. Even better, she is the worst cook on the planet, even my teenaged son won’t eat at her house. No insight whatsoever, so I am slowly assuming all the holiday cooking.
Sly
@p.a.:
Research into fruit flies has been key to many recent advances in understanding various birth defects. Cognitive disorders in particular. Early autism detection has advanced considerably because of it.
When Palin started inserting the “No more fruit fly research” shtick into her 2008 speeches, calling instead for research on autism, my old bio professor in college, who specializes in phylogenetic research and is one of the most gregarious people I have ever met, called her a “fucking moron.”
Kyle
@Martin:
Gee, it would have been helpful if someone from the Dems had, you know, bothered to mention these kind of details to the public, to demonstrate that the bill actually has features that make sense. Or pitched the payment penalty for having no health insurance as a premium to cover emergency treatment for the uninsured population, a way to have them cover the costs they were incurring by not having insurance.
Instead we get a pack of mealy-mouth chickenshits who dare not defend the health care bill because the Faux Noise barking dogs might say something mean about them, which they will regardless.
MTiffany
And Toomey’s ad here in PA said that Sestak voted to cut 500 billion dollars from Medicare. Sestak never responded (or better yet, pre-emptively aired) with an ad saying Sestak voted to end a 500 billion tax-payer funded subsidy to the health insurance industry.
Change is scary, especially when it’s distorted and outright lied about.
Ash
I’m just so god damn amused that these fucking cave people managed to get 200 MILLION DOLLA DOLLA BILLS out of 200 million rupees.
Sly
@Ash:
As a teacher I make between two and a half and three million rupees a year. Maybe the Republicans are right about all us mooching civil servants.
kay
@MTiffany:
I know we’re usually disappointed at Democratic “messaging”, but this was genuinely tough to explain.
A 30 second ad just won’t do it. I knew it was going to be political trouble when it appeared in the Senate bill, but it was actually the right and responsible thing to do.
Too, Medicare Advantage offers freebies for the purchaser. They get cheap goodies up-front (health club memberships, free over the counter drugs, etc). People are loathe to give up “free” stuff, and conservatives made sure there was plenty of “free” stuff in Medicare Advantage.
On balance, I don’t know how Democrats could have defended against that absolute wave of Citizens money on this particular issue.
The point for me is this: conservative could not make “the tough choices” on this ONE failed entitlement program. They could not do the right and responsible thing. In fact, they exploited the right and responsible thing, and used it as a weapon, and it’s a budget-buster.
They’re frauds on fiscal conservatism, as on everything else.
Mnemosyne
@Ash:
Yeah, right, like there are such things as countries that have currencies other than the US dollar. That’s just crazy talk.
/wingnut
Paris
Create a new program to shovel money to the olds and get yourself elected. Sounds like a winning strategy.
The Other Chuck
I just want Gibbs to come out and say it without mincing words: “Michelle Bachmann is a liar.”
Five easy words. It would be the absolute truth. Why does everyone have to gladhandle this insane bat?
chopper
what’s wonderful is, a bunch of people who can’t even recognize their own country’s fucking currency are now promising to ‘balance the budget’.
we are so boned.
chopper
@Sly:
maybe next up we can hear bachmann complain about how her hair treatment cost 100 brazilian dollars.
Martin
@Kay: Here’s a report.
If you look at hospital admissions by age, there’s a steady 3% increase from each age group. That is, 3% more 52 year-old are admitted to the hospital as 51 year olds. That remains essentially constant until age 62 (the earliest you can sign up for Social Security, presumably when a lot of people choose to retire, but before you are eligible for Medicare). From 62 to 63 the number of hospital admissions *declines* slightly. Presumably people that have retired, lost their insurance, and who start deferring care. That declines again from 63 to 64. From 64 to 65, the number of hospital admissions jumps 9.5% – they just signed up for Medicare. It then drops to below 1% from 65 to 66, bangs around a while, and then starts to drop steadily above age 70 (people start dying in big numbers).
That 9.5% increase at age 65 suggests that the quite a few people are deferring care from age 62 to 65. If those people were insured, they’d seek care before age 65 rather than deferring it until it they hit the Medicare rolls. That the increase from 65 to 66 is smaller than for ages younger than 62 suggest that not only are more people going in for care, they’re consuming proportionately more care at age 65 than the did in earlier years. That is, the relative health of individuals *improves* from 65 to 66 – the only time that happens.
Individuals aged 65-69 have 10% more physician visits than for 61-64 year olds. You’d expect a bit of an increase, but that’s significant. The total number of physician visits for 61 year-olds is about 134M and that declines to 130M for 64 year olds. It then jumps to 147M for 65 year olds and then starts to decline again. That’s probably 10 million or so deferred doctor visits. From the report:
•The number of drug visits increases 11.3% from age 64 to age 65.
•The average annual number of drug visits is 19% higher among 65-72 year-olds than it is among 60-64 year-olds.
• Average annual number of prescribed medicines is 65% higher among 66-75 year- olds than it is among 56-65 year olds.
From age 50 to 64, the annual death probability rate (the likelihood you will die in the next year) increases from 8% to 10%. 10% isn’t the death probability, but the death probability at 64 is 10% higher than than it is at 63. At age 65, the death probability rate slows from 10% YoY increase to only 6.5% YoY increase for age 69. Better care from age 65 onward lengthens lifespan – to the effect that due to Medicare, 65 year olds are about 5% more likely to live another 10 years than without Medicare. That’s directly the result of greater utilization of health care from 65+. That effect would be more pronounced if people didn’t delay care between 62 and 65.
These aren’t hypothetical models. This is measured and tested. Nothing magical happens at age 65 to cause people to need more doctor visits, more hospital visits, more prescriptions. Yes, you have the steady annual growth, but we’re seeing a relative *decline* from 62-64 and then a rapid increase from 65+, and then a relative decline again after 65. That can only be due to deferred care.
The federal government needs to wipe out that deferred care. They can eliminate 100% of the first order expenses from the Medicare budget, and they can eliminate some percentage of the second order expenses (the need to provide more expensive care because conditions went untreated or under-treated). Those numbers compound as you get 100% of 50 year-olds on health insurance and then take the benefits of reduced Medicare costs from age 65 onward due to better treatment for the decade and a half before they hit the program. That’s why the 2nd decade budget savings are so massive compared to the first.
The first decade savings come primarily from Medicare Advantage and the new taxes. The second decade come from what I just described. It’s a huge, huge thing, but it’s hard to see how it works.
Martin
@Kyle: Oh, they did talk about it. But it takes at least 5 minutes to lay it all out. Who the fuck gets 5 minutes on TV? A typical 60 minutes segment, which is considered long-form policy is only about 17 minutes. Nobody on cable news gets 5 minutes, not without some fuckwad screaming over the top of them about death panels.
jl
“Do you think media will continue to ask the question, or will a series of transparent deflections like Bachmann’s work? If the media mouthpieces yell “look over there!” every day, will anyone pursue the question conservatives can’t answer?”
Man, if I were president, the media would not have to ask questions. I would pull little Harry Truman moments every other day. I would ‘just be passing by’ Gibb’s little press conference every day, and spontaneously deciding ‘to make a few spontaneous remarks’. Such as:
“I would like to know why this great country has so many news organizations that spend all their time printing horseshit. You, you little snot nosed twerp from Fox, how the hell can you explain your organization printing idiot fantasies? … Excuse me punk, I asked you a question, and it looks like you can’t answer it. Well that is nice to know. This so called reporter can’t defend his own organization. That is pretty piss poor if you ask me. Now excuse me, I have a real job and some work to do.”
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
I’m glad to hear that. I’d have thought she take a well-earned retirement to spend more time with her grandkids, but it’s great she’s staying.
Issa’s gonna use his subpoena and investigative powers solely to dig up shit to use against the Dems so that the GOP won’t have to answer any hard questions about budget math.
priscianus jr
Hey you Democrats just don’t get “it.” (As Jon Stewart pointed out recently.) It doesn’t MATTER that Bachmann’s statement isn’t factually true. It’s POETICALLY true! It’s a great story! It validates her constituency’s feelings about Mr. Obama! You guys are still in the reality-based world. The GOP creates it’s own world and you will continually be running to catch up! And you never will!
(I’m starting to see why Plato wanted to banish the poets from his ideal republic.)
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
That’s the same Taj Mahal Hotel that Kashmiri separatists attacked in the Mumbai attacks.
If this was Shrub, the wingnuts would be fapping over the symbolism of Shrub bravely staying where Mooslim terraists attacked and his showing of solidarity with plucky India.
kay
@Martin:
Thanks. I’ll read it.
From your last comment, I misunderstood your point.
I read the whole administration thing on preventative/chronic, etc. but that’s not really what you’re pointing to. The administration paper was one of those “and then we’ll be healthier (magic dust!) then… lots and lots of money saved!”
You’re saying they’re actually deferring specific care, which is much more solid than “they might be healthier if we all had preventative (wellness based) care”.
From what I’ve read, the health care industry sucks at wellness, as opposed to treating sickness, so I was wary of that assumption.
Martin
@priscianus jr: What’s the contrapositive of ‘factually true but collectively nonsense’?
Martin
@kay: There is actual evidence of “and then we’ll be healthier (magic dust!) then… lots and lots of money saved!”, so that’s not entirely false.
What Democrats have almost completely lost sight of is that ACA started as nothing more than entitlement reform. The only thing Obama was aiming to do is to balance the Medicare budget. The concept was that if he could get entitlement spending under control without weakening the plans, that he’d be able to later come out and say ‘We saved x trillions of dollars from Medicare, and improved outcomes through these efforts. We can now afford to extend Medicare downward to cover people under 65.
Obama’s long-term plan has always been some manner of single payer (probably not what the left would ideally want, though), but you cannot sell that idea when the government’s existing single-payer program is completely blowing up. To add to it would only blow it up worse. So single-payer was a non-starter for perfectly valid, responsible reasons.
But the way to get Medicare costs under control was to shift those expenses *out* of Medicare, back to where they really ought to be. And that’s why we ended up with the mandate. Without ACA, Medicare would completely cease to exist within 10 years. Longer if it were allowed to undermine Social Security as well, but eventually killing both programs. My dad is the first of the baby boomers, born in 1946. He’s 64 now. Right now, the boomers have started taking reduced Social Security payments. In another year the first boomers will be taking full payments and hitting Medicare. This surge of Medicare patients is going to bankrupt the system. This should have been addressed a decade ago rather than having the GOP pile more costs on the program with no revenues.
kay
@Martin:
I got this, but only because I followed the Baucus process closely.
What I also got was that it was politically dicey, because they were grabbing the Third Rail. It’s interesting, because Democrats are really the only people who can save these entitlement programs. They’re the only ones with any credibility, because they, you know, unlike conservatives, they invented them and they actually believe in them.
Still, there was huge political risk there, and Obama took it, and LOST the midterms, and shit, Martin, you have to admire that.
No conservative would ever take such a huge short term risk for a long term solvency issue. In his own quiet way, he’s quite the gambler, Mr. Obama.
Joshua
It’s not just Medicare Advantage. Listen to a wingnut and he will say Obama “socialized the student loan industry”, which is of course untrue.
The truth is that the student loan industry has been socialized since the beginning (and there’s a good chance that wingnut, if they have a degree, benefitted from that), but the CWA-era Republican Congress instituted a system where the government was spending more money to have private companies bungle the loans.
This system was great for the corrupt private companies, who got free profits on the taxpayer dime and took it a step further and stole billions of dollars from taxpayers. It was great for corrupt student loan officers and alumni groups, who got free vacations and cash bribes for putting the companies on preferred lender lists. But it wasn’t so great for taxpayers and it wasn’t so great for students.
I imagine Medicare Advantage is similarly broken and corrupt – actually more broken and corrupt, since so many more dollars are at stake.
jl
@kay:
I think Martin’s argument is basically correct. If you want something ‘published’ there is this NBER study, which examines effect of fragmentation on health care costs generally, both from incentive problem for late middle aged in private insurance who will soon go into Medicare, and in employment based health insurance in high turnover industries.
The paper contains original research and a survey of the literature.
DYNAMIC INEFFICIENCIES IN EMPLOYMENT-BASED HEALTH INSURANCE SYSTEM:
THEORY AND EVIDENCE
Hanming Fang
Alessandro Gavazza
Working Paper 13371
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
September 2007
http://www.econ.upenn.edu/~hfang/teaching/socialinsurance/readings/Fang_Gavazza07(3.8).pdf
There is a very good paper that estimates the specific increase in health care costs due to transition to medicare, but I cannot find it right now. will post link later if I can find it on my computer. That paper might be referenced someplace in the Fang/Gavassa study.
These statistical analyses match my anecdotal experience in meetings with medical officers and actuaries for health insurers and health plans during presentations on social value of more generous primary care.
The bottom line on decision making was usually ‘Yes, we should do that, but in five or ten years, they will be Medicare’s problem, so, you know, we have to survive in the market. We just could not compete on premiums if we did what we should do”.
Jamie
The irony and cognitive dissonance on this is making me dizzy.
Joshua
@dr. bloor:
Sarah Palin greatly benefitted from the Dubya rules in her VP debate.
@p.a.:
Ever read MyRightWingDad? They just recycle the jokes/smears by swapping out the names. What were once Clinton jokes became Al Gore jokes became Hillary jokes became John Kerry jokes became Nancy Pelosi jokes because Obama jokes. If Heath Shuler (or whoever) becomes minority leader they will become Heath Shuler jokes. You think they give a fuck that you are a Blue Dog, Heath?
MTiffany
@kay: I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you about the “free this” and “free that” and people loving free goodies, but Medicare Advantage just seemed like such an obvious target because it was so easy to spin — and I recall the Toomey add explicitly using the number and spelling it out: “Joe Sestak voted to cut $500,000,000,000 from the Medicare budget,” which is not even marginally technically correct, it’s a complete fucking lie. Rather than Democrats going on offense with ads touting “the health care bill ended a $500,000,000,000 subsidy of the health insurance industry,” which is completely and unequivocally true, or perhaps something technically correct “the health care bill ended a $500,000,000,000 bailout of the health insurance industry,” albeit misleading.
Jamie
the oddest thing is the dems ran a great campaign in 2008, and then forgot everything they new about public relations. absolutely infuriating
Jamie
heath shuler is pretty conservative. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t become a republican
Martin
@Joshua:
It runs the gamut, really. ACA gave significant power to CMS to negotiate Part C plans, and they really started putting the hammer down for next year’s plans. Premiums collectively cannot rise. Benefits must go up (ACA mandates free mammograms, generic drugs, stuff like that). And they’re revising the rating system to make it much more fair and accurate. 300 Part C plans were dropped by CMS for not meeting outcomes. I expect more will be dropped next year when the 15% bonus goes away.
kay
@MTiffany:
Medicare cuts just scare the shit out of old people, and we weren’t going to win that panic-driven argument, IMO. I saw the same campaign lies you did, but people weren’t listening to reason, and I don’t think Setsak would have gotten through, so he left it alone.
Hope springs eternal, but I think Democrats can make an extremely persuasive case defending student loan reform, which is a lot like the Medicare Advantage-privatization debacle, in terms of failed conservative ideas.
It is indefensible to load up young people with government-guaranteed debt that only benefits lenders.
There’s no good argument for conservatives to hand 80 billion to lenders that is now going to Pell Grants and other student aid, and they know it. Lots and lots of people in red states are poor, and lots and lots of them receive Pell Grants.
We can win that one. I would pick a fight on it, if I were a Democrat in the House. I would term conservative attempts to gut student loan reform a “back door bank bailout”, because that’s exactly what it is.
It’s one of the reasons I want Pelosi to remain leader, because student loans are her pet issue.
Montysano
Shorter Michelle Bachmann: “Well, Anderson, everyone knows how ni66ers are with money.”
kay
@Joshua:
I want Democrats to raise it. Pick a fight. I would go to community colleges, not state or private universities, to do that. I just think that would be beautiful, and a community college is the perfect forum to talk about rip-off student loans, and income-based grants. Those students know all about that.
Obama and Pelosi should go to community colleges in conservative areas, and invite the newly elected conservative House member to a debate.
For extra bipartisan points, they can bring the loathsome and disgusting lobbyist Lanny Davis, who can argue the losing conservative side.
Martin
@jl:
Yes, this is precisely the attitude I’ve gotten from some CEOs. What I’d add is that there is a genuine interest in getting more of these things right but they lack the power to negotiate on costs. That’s a particular problem with drug costs because even the biggest insurers are simply too small. Drug companies negotiate with national health care systems, not BCBS of Idaho.
The insurers were on board with Obama’s initial plan because they were fighting the same battle – getting costs down. If Obama could get it done for Medicare, the benefits would spill over to the insurers. The overhead that private insurers demand is annoying, but it’s a tiny amount relative to the problems at stake. Obama was ignoring those costs in exchange for getting the insurers to support his plan, which was hugely beneficial. It put a unified front on the cost problem, and got Democrats support from industry. The insurers could then prove that they deserved to keep the market as-is, and it was up to the states to oversee it all. They knew there would be new regulation and new requirements like the pre-existing conditions. They largely agreed to those constraints. It was a pretty solid plan – voluntary concessions from insurers in exchange for support to knock down the huge for-profit care market. Obama took the drug companies down behind the scenes. The whole thing was going to be relatively orderly, with only fights from medical groups (which would be relatively tepid) and Republicans (which would be nasty).
But the professional left missed the point and went crazy over insurance profits and threatened to blow up the plan. It was maddening. It’s still maddening. The house is on fire and they’re pissed that the fire department hooked the hoses up to their metered water and are running around unhooking the hoses. Yeah, the $100K house is going to burn down, but goddamnit I don’t want to pay that $100 higher water bill! Hamsher and Olbermann and Kos and the others forced the Democrats to fight *everyone* – insurers, physician groups, drug companies, Republicans and even liberals. All of the groups Obama and his allies lined up for support ran to the GOP. Rush Limbaugh couldn’t have done a better job of fucking this plan up.
CEOs that were cautiously supportive of the plan were forced to oppose it because liberals wanted to eliminate the health insurance market. I got an earful of that. Barring that, liberals wanted to control salaries and bonuses. Barring that, they wanted to wreck the whole effort, putting the cost problems back which the insurers were desperate to get out from under. The didn’t seem to give a fuck about the Medicare problem or the cost of care problem – they only wanted to attack insurers. The GOP wasn’t doing much, but at least they weren’t attacking their industry.
That the Democrats stuck it out is really very remarkable. They solved a massive problem at great political expense. They earned my vote for quite a long time for that.
MCA
I’m not sure if it makes it all more sad or less, but this is not explained away by a simple failure to transcribe rupees and insert dollars instead. The fail fest of an Indian publication on which this is all based actually cited a rupee figure that, when converted, equals $200 million/day. They also printed the 34 boat armada figure, a number so outlandishly inaccurate the Pentagon had to put out a press release exasperatedly stating “That’s over 10% of our Navy and ergo fucking ludicrous, you morons.” Maybe not an accurate quote, I’m not sure.
How anyone could hear that figure, $200 million/day, and not immediately think “that’s obviously an order of magnitude off” is beyond me, but the silver lining in all this is that there are apparently news editors in India as gullible and/or lazy and/or stupid as those in our own lovely system. So maybe we’re not as alone in our idiocracy as we think we are.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Well, you don’t see student loan sales reps. going door-to-door and bamboozling students into taking several loans they don’t need.
Yet.
Martin
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Oh, hell yes you do. The whole for-profit education system centers around it.
Nick
Clearly, if Obama had used the bully pulpit…
jl
@Martin: I agree that most people, especially the clinical people no matter how high in administration they get, and the actuaries, have good intentions, and if they make decisions inconsistent with empirical evidence and reasonable standard of care (In my opinion that happens quite often), I think they recognize it an evil that must be tolerated as long as we have current market organization.
That is also true of the executives I have met, but then they are the the type of executives who are willing to show their faces at clinical and quality improvement conferences and participate in outside studies of their quality of care.
We may disagree on substance wrt to health care reform. I think the US insurance market is unstable under the current regulatory regime. I think the rabid public option advocates were wrong in putting all the emphasis on the evil private insurance industry, but had come to the correct conclusion: regulatory changes in the proposed health care reform were not enough, and unless reform could get more, a public option was necessary for a reasonably stable system acceptable to the public if there was a mandate.
I’ve discussed my view with people I have met in management, but no one high enough to care about whether the current for profit system should survive or not. But my impression is that the higher reaches would consider a Swiss style, mostly private, system a ‘death sentence’. As an economists and statistician who has looked at the data, my opinion is ‘Well, too bad, your idea of a for profit insurance system must die in order to provide adequate population health and be equitable to sick people.’ To me it is no matter what they think, since if they go Galt, there will be plenty more plenty qualified people to take over who would love to run a Swiss style system. Most of them are not evil, I think they are simply mistaken or ignorant about the economics of the situation.
jl
@Martin: I agree that there is a big problem in overcoming the obstacle of an entrenched industry.
At this point, were I President, my attitude would be that the insurance industry ratted me out. If the industry is supporting GOPers who vote to repeal the reform, then they finked out. I protected the deal, and they jumped off the compromise. Either they are unreliable, or they are treacherous.
So, I have to defend attempts to repeal the reform, especially those help ordinary people that are taking effect now. And I will use that defense to rally the population for more reform, and start the process of killing the industry in its current form.
I should point out that I do not have much respect for the type of executives you see on TV testifying. I have been in offices talking with executives who talk like them. I have met very few who know anything about healthcare, statistics, quality, epidemiology. They know about business schemes, marketing, and financial shenanigans. So, who needs them to run a health care system? A better system with better incentives would attract better qualified managers and executives, in my opinion.
M
@Jamie:
Sorry to be a nitpicker, but Shuler is a right-wing authoritarian (I know I sound like a bit of an ass, but I really think it’s time to use proper terminology). That’s a different animal than a conservative. Probably comes from his football background; doing what you’re told while believing you’re an individualistic badass is part and parcel of that world.