http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_r...fm?DR_ID=22676
Quote:
|
Richard Foster, chief actuary for CMS, on Friday confirmed that he was ordered by then-CMS Administrator Tom Scully to withhold from legislators "unfavorable cost estimates" for the Medicare legislation, which exceeded by more than $100 billion "what Congress seemed willing to accept," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports (Pugh, Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/13). The Inquirer last week reported that an e-mail from Foster to colleagues at CMS indicated he believed he might lose his job if he revealed his estimates of the Medicare legislation's cost. According to Office of Management and Budget estimates released after Congress passed the legislation, the Medicare law will cost $534 billion over the next 10 years, $134 billion more than estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 3/12). While "internal documents and federal officials" indicated that the Bush administration knew of the higher estimate for the legislation before its passage and enactment, until now "it has not been apparent the lengths to which Bush aides who negotiated the bill with Congress went to keep the figures private," the Washington Post reports (Goldstein, Washington Post, 3/13). Foster said the higher cost projection was known before the final House and Senate votes on the legislation in November, but he added that Scully told him, "'We can't let that get out'" (Rogers, Wall Street Journal, 3/15).
|
A medicare actuary was told to keep his mouth shut about the true costs of the medicare bill.
Apparently, the admin had to throw out a number to get some fiscal conservatives to sign on(what does that say about party cohesion?). Unfortunately, the admin underestimated(those wacky bush economists, when will they ever get it right?). They "underestimated" to the tune of 100 to 200 billion dollars. Not only that, but when their actuary came up with a higher, more accurarate figure he was made to feel like his job would be in jeopardy if he spilt the beans.
The point? They knew their figure was innacurate. They also knew that an accurate figure would probably result in their bill not passing. Instead of doing the honest thing, the *ahem* christian thing, they keep quiet. Bill passes, higher cost becomes apparent, bush
pisses off (and on) members of his own party by lying to them.
Now, as some of you may know, i think that most politicians are lying sacks of shit. This is more for the people on the right side who decry candidate kerry's apparent lack of integrity compared to bush's godlike status, the people who think(i'm paraphrasing) "bush does what he says he is going to do, he is a man of integrity".
This may seem nitpicky, but i thought that with all of these nitpicky articles about kerry, perhaps we could balance things out a bit.