Moneyed Politicians

By Jack E. Lohman

Recession or not, it hurts. And there’s only one thing that can get us back on track.

1. Jobs!

Following every other recession we’ve had jobs to revitalize us. Now those jobs are in other countries.

We’re even looking at the positive side of $4 gas… as the cost of importing product goes up, bringing jobs back to the states looks better each day. Toyota is now moving a Prius plant to the U.S..

Isn’t that great?

Obama wants to eliminate subsidies to companies that outsource jobs to other countries, and indeed we should. But we should also ask why congress gave these taxpayer-funded favors in the first place.

The answer is clear: Our moneyed electoral system demands it. Politicians from both parties taking money to do exactly opposite of what is in the best interest of the country. It will ultimately cost us our democracy.

Correction, it already has.

I don’t care that our GDP is growing. We are spending increasing amounts of money on gas, food and health care. How else would you expect the GDP to respond? And when the newly-rich foreigners — you know, the ones who now have our jobs — buy product from the US, it is also added to our growing GDP.

And you thought our GDP represented only American spending?

I don’t care if the “average personal income” is rising faster than inflation. That’s because the salaries for our richest CEOs are rising at 25%. That’ll create a rise every time, even while those at the bottom are effectively in a nosedive.

What I do care about is that an ever-higher percentage of my family’s personal income is going to satisfy the millionaires that line the pockets of the politicians, and less of our individual income is going to savings and to my family’s needs. I care that seniors’ meals-on-wheels programs are running out of money for food, and in some cases are being eliminated. I care that George Bush gave a massive tax break for the rich and put this nation’s and the world’s economy in a tailspin.

I call that a “recession,” but you can call it whatever you want.

Yes we must cut business taxes to stimulate growth, and that can only mean cutting state spending. But government spending results when corporations give campaign contributions to politicians to generate industry subsidies. Political corruption. Bribery. Payola.

Some politicians (and most conservatives) seem unable to connect these dots.

But guess what? All of this increases taxes!!!!

So several things are needed. First, we must get private money out of our electoral system through public funding of campaigns. Next we need a whole new set of politicians in November. Lastly, we must reset to zero. Apply a sunset clause to every state department, and they either justify their existence or they close the doors. Even if they stay in place, their budgets and waste must be substantially cut and unnecessary staff and procedures eliminated.

By Jack E. Lohman

It was hard to believe my ears.

Either Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner was spinning his vote for the insurance industry, or he truly doesn’t get it.

At a recent town hall meeting Jim boasted that he voted against reducing the funds for Medicare’s Advantage program because some of his constituents like the program. And yep, 19% of seniors have fallen for the claims by Advantage salesmen, as did he.

But in the process, he tossed to the wolves the other 81% of seniors with traditional Medicare!

Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers up to 17% more than traditional Medicare, and generally provide less patient care. HR6331 would have lowered the private Medicare payments to equal those of public Medicare, but Jim wouldn’t stand for it.

Forget that ”private” should be less costly than “public,” it isn’t.

Medicare Advantage plans (a clever oxymoron) are more costly not because they offer more services to patients – because they take more than they give – but because they waste more money on salesman commissions, actuarial costs (cherry-picking), utilization review (gatekeepers and denial of care), higher CEO salaries and bonuses, and in some cases shareholder profits and even lobbying and campaign contributions that get added to patient costs.

Hereby lies the key: private Medicare Advantage companies can give campaign contributions and public Medicare cannot!!!

So what else would you expect from Jim Sensenbrenner? He also opposes campaign reform, which would greatly reduce the corruption in Washington and fix a lot of our nation’s problems.

The Advantage plans are usually fine, until you get really sick and need care. The Medicare Rights Center found serious problems when, too often, these plans did not provide the care they promise. This has prompted several state attorney generals to sue the companies on behalf of patients.

Among the faults found:

1. Care can cost more than it would under Original Medicare;
2. Private plans are not stable;
3. Difficulty getting emergency or urgent care;
4. Continuity of care is broken;
5. Members have to follow plan rules to get covered care;
6. Choice of doctor, hospital and other providers is restricted;
7. Difficulty getting care away from home;
8. Promised extra benefits can be very limited;
9. People with both Medicare and Medicaid can encounter higher costs.

Worse, in order to pay for the 17% subsidy to the private Advantage companies, congress allowed a 10.6% cut in physician payments from “traditional Medicare” to take effect on July 1st. The obvious result is that physicians will significantly reduce (or sometimes eliminate) the number of new “traditional” Medicare patients they take, and/or start skimping on the number of needed diagnostic tests they perform.

So, many of the remaining 81% of seniors will now have to start looking for lesser-quality and more costly Advantage plans, which is exactly what the private insurance industry wanted!

Thank you, Congressman Sensenbrenner.

Another problem is that most of these plans are “capitated” and paid at a fixed rate by Medicare. So whenever the company can avoid providing tests or surgeries, that savings adds to their bottom line in profits. A major incentive for denial of care.

I asked Jim why, when the taxpayers give politicians health care, he calls it “employee benefits.” But when taxpayers give citizens health care he calls it “socialized medicine.”

Not surprisingly he launched into a tirade defending the federal health care system. He ignored that most seniors have paid into Medicare over the past 40 years, and are subject to the same 20% deductible federal employees are.

Funny how that works, but you have to know the mentality. Sensenbrenner’s gold-plated plan is neither a capitated plan nor a health savings account (HSA), both of which he supports for the masses but not for himself.

Reports on Medicare Advantage Plans:

States Look to Rein In Private Medicare Plans

Private Medicare Plans’ Cost Questioned

Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans

Sensenbrenner’s Republican challenger, Jim Burkee, has promised to self-limit his stay in the House to 6 years, which would be quite a change from Jim’s 30 year stand. His website outlines his disagreements with Sensenbrenner, though he (inappropriately, I think) supports free-market health care.

This bill ultimately passed the senate with a 69-30 veto-proof majority on July 9th, no thanks to Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan. After Ted Kennedy (D-MA) cast the deciding vote, nine Republicans changed theirs to vote their conscience. To understand why they didn’t vote their conscience in the first place, just follow the money!

That is our corrupt system. Get used to it… or change it!

Sensenbrenner, Ryan hold out for insurance industry

By Jack E. Lohman

HR6331 passed in the U.S. House but failed in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the financial contributions from the insurance industry to our esteemed politicians.

Isn’t democracy great?

Although the House voted 355 to 59 to preserve Medicare payments to physicians, Republicans Jim Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan voted with the insurance interests and against Medicare. It gives a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that they (a) voted against Wisconsin seniors, present and future, and (b) voted against an efficient health care system that not only works well, but should become our national standard. Good guys these.

Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold voted correctly, in favor of saving physician payments and eliminating the subsidies to private insurers.

There were two aspects to the defeated HR6331…..

1. It would have retained the payments to physicians treating “traditional” Medicare patients. George Bush and his followers want to eliminate public Medicare altogether, because “private” Medicare can give campaign contributions and public Medicare can’t. By reducing payments to physicians by 10.6%, which becomes effective July 1st, fewer physicians will accept traditional Medicare patients, and those patients will have to seek out “private” Medicare companies instead.
                
2. We will now continue the taxpayer-paid subsidies to private insurers. In 2003 Bush signed a law allowing private insurers to “compete” with public Medicare. Roughly 20% of Medicare beneficiaries have chosen the private systems and 80% have remained with traditional Medicare. Problem is, private Medicare companies are paid (by taxpayers) up to 17% more than it costs for traditional Medicare!
           
   So much for private being less costly than public.

So here we have it. Politicians on the take are making decisions in the best interest of their contributors. It is puzzling that conservatives who oppose high taxes tolerate this corrupt system, but that’s the way it is.

The best, simplest, least costly, most efficient thing we could do is expand what has been working so well for years, Medicare. You get sick, you get care, and the caregiver gets paid. Nothing could be simpler. 

Every individual in America is paying for our health care system already, either through cost shifting, bankruptcy costs, or when employers add their costs to their product and we reimburse them at the cash register. We ought to simply extend Medicare to everyone and eliminate the 31% insurance bureaucracy waste. This would be a boon to U.S. businesses and would keep jobs in the country. But admittedly, the insurance industry that is enjoying the 31% waste wouldn’t like it a bit, and they are helping to fund the politicians’ campaigns. Political corruption at its finest!

Coincidentally, Sensenbrenner has investments in Merck, Pfizer, Medco Health, and Ryan has investments in Baxter, Medtronic, Tenet Healthcare, Pfizer. Both receive significant campaign contributions from the health care industry.

 

Since Sensenbrenner’s republican opponent, Jim Burkee, follows the health care ideology of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), it is assumed that he would have voted the same way as Coburn and Sensenbrenner. 

By Jack E. Lohman

I have a question for the folks at Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, which parades itself as “Wisconsin’s Free-Market Think Tank.”

Actually, it’s an easy one:  Who funds your organization?

I’ve asked several times and haven’t received an answer. I think I know why.

If it is insurance industry money, even in part, please just say: “This study was funded by the insurance industry.”

Money does funny things to people, and I realize that hatchet jobs don’t come cheap. Just ask your favorite politician. Many of them receive money from the insurance industry, and coincidentally, even inccurate reports give them cover to do the wrong thing at the right time.

It’s funny how that works, but I expect that y’all knew that.

Clearly, if I wanted a job shilling for the industry, I’d set up a “think tank” and promise reports that shoot down logical health care reform. Because, don’cha know, logical reforms would necessitate eliminating the insurance industry. And even if that’s the right thing to do for businesses and the economy, it’d be last on my list.

I’d also approach Philip Morris and RJR and write negative reports on cigarette taxes and smoking bans. This could become a pretty profitable deal for both of us. And I’d write against election reform because that would put a damper on my future work and block my client’s influence over willing politicians.

The problem with “think tanks” — and I put Heritage and Cato in this category – is that they too often are funded by special interests whose sole purpose is to distort the system against the public’s best interest and toward their shareholders. A “private think tank” gives them cover.

Not the height of honesty, but that’s the way it is. The tobacco industry mastered the technique over the years. Remember when smoking was good for your health? And scientists swore to it???

This country desperately needs honest, unbiased studies about health care and the environment, but private shareholder money is not the way to get there. Whether by bought-off scientists or think tanks, whether intentional or not, bogus or incorrect reports stimey much needed progress and can do great harm to society.

But we know that already.

I’m not impressed with WPRI’s biases. Gov. Doyle, please use my tax money and produce good, reliable data!

Wouldn’t it be nice if think tanks, bloggers and nonprofits – on both sides of the issue – voluntarily disclosed at least their corporate funders?

Of course, the bigger problem is the politicians they influence, and the only way to correct our political system is with public funding of campaigns. But some politicians believe that a level playing field will work against them, so they are blocking any progress in that direction.

And that says it all. These corrupt politicians must be replaced in November, and WDC provides the best guidance. Those in the right three right columns must be unelected. Term limited, if you will.

Can you believe it? Only nine politicians worth keeping?

For the record, all of my web sites are funded by me and me alone. Give your money to your favorite charity. I do not take contributions and you can see my complete disclosure HERE.

Nor is this for book sales. You can get a free copy HERE (pay shipping and handling only).

By Jack E. Lohman

Imagine that you’ve invested in a private company with a conflicted board of directors, where some are taking cash on the side from the area’s most expensive accounting service, ABC, and your CEO is in on the deal.

And they are giving contracts to ABC instead of the cheaper and better XYZ service, because ABC gives kickbacks and XYZ doesn’t. They are stealing from you and driving your company into bankruptcy, all while padding their own pockets. Nice.

And it’s not just ABC they’re in bed with, it’s every vendor your company deals with! Cash and profits going out and flowing back to the decision makers! And your company has to pay higher prices because some of the money must be kicked back to your leaders.

Wow!!! In the criminal world, that’s bribery, payola and theft. It’s corrupt and illegal. People actually go to jail for this kind of thing.

But this isn’t only happening in the criminal world, it’s also happening in your government. Your trusted politicians (directors), receive campaign contributions (payola and kickbacks), and give away taxpayer assets in return.

Think… “road contractors, travel contracts, and voting software contracts.” Politicians award taxpayer-funded contracts and policies and tie it into this thing called “freedom of speech.”

The U.S. Supreme Court did that for you, but as blogger Clyde Winter writes, money is not speech. It is a possession, like your house or car. You use cash to buy things and services and, sometimes, political favors. If you don’t have money, you are out of luck.

Politicians claim you can also buy speech, and if that’s all it bought and none went into their pockets, it wouldn’t be so bad. But the very politicians who serve as your state’s and your nation’s board of directors are taking this cash and giving away taxpayer assets in return. They are on the take, and getting away with it!

It began with Ronald Reagan, led to the 1994 Gingrich takeover of congress, and culminated with the election of George Bush. I voted for Reagan and both Bushes, but I’m a lot smarter today.

I ask conservatives repeatedly: How are you liking it so far?  I never get an answer. These wiseacres started out to drown the government in the bathtub and hit the toilet instead, and now they are wallowing in the results.

Tax cuts for the wealthy turned our $300 billion surplus into a $600 billion deficit, trashed the dollar bill, drove housing prices down and fuel and food costs up, sent jobs overseas, and transferred our country’s assets to the Asians, Europeans and Middle Easterners.

I ask again, Are we having fun yet?

There is but one solution, and that’s to totally replace our government. Not incrementally, all at once. But the Republican party is still filled with the garbage that got us to where we are today. Let’s see if the Dems are willing to give us back our democracy. And if not, they will get ousted too.

In fairness, there’s a handful of decent politicians who don’t like the image of the corrupt system and deserve re-election. The voters know who they are.

Only a handful? See the nine best legislators: Democracy Defenders at WDC

By Jack E. Lohman

The business members of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce need help on health care costs, but not the kind of help they are getting from their association.

It’s bad enough that, historically, employers have been saddled with providing health care to their employees. It’s a stupid system that grew to reward insurance companies for serving as the middleman, albeit at an additional cost of 31% to cover the total insurance bureaucracy. That whole structure must change.

But in the meantime, there IS something WMC can do to alleviate the problem.

Rather than embracing the costly “middleman” structure that protects the insurance bureaucracy, WMC should itself offer a Medicare-type of system to its members, not the commercial plans it currently sells for the industry.

All WMC would have to do is set up a bill-paying entity like WPS has done for Medicare, and even use the same Medicare fee schedule and fee-for-service system in use today. Then charge members for the healthcare costs sans the wasted 31%.

They could even subcontract it to WPS or one of its competitors.

Even WPS could set up a “commercial” Medicare service, if they wanted, but this would compete with their current commercial service so I hold no hope there.

The savings to WMC members would come from the elimination of the current actuarial and marketing costs and commissions, gatekeeping costs, high CEO salaries and bonuses, and the ever-growing shareholder profits. It would function as a nonprofit service and would strengthen and grow WMC’s membership.

One WMC faction would not be happy campers: its insurance company members. But the other 80-90% would be estatic, and the state’s business climate would grow exponentially. We’d all welcome that.

Will WMC get smart, or will its membership have to look elsewhere for such services? 

Time will tell.

Can you imagine this? Free market healthcare! Businesses can “elect” to join or not, and WMC could even allow the uninsured to buy in! What a novel concept.

By Jack E. Lohman

I’ve got it!

Step One: Refuse insurance coverage for 15% of our politicians, under-insure another 15%, and put the rest on a high-deductible health savings account.

Step Two: Ban all campaign contributions moving from the healthcare and insurance industries to the politicians.

Step Three: Actually, step three isn’t needed. Without health insurance or industry money, the politicians will fix the system virtually overnight. Even if we just eliminated the industry money, the politicians would do the right thing.

Sad, isn’t it? That the guys and gals that are paid by us actually work for them. But that’s the world we live in.

That’s the way it’s going to be until November and we throw out the old and bring in the new.

Yeah, some of the indestructible young bucks will be okay with the high deductible plans, at least until one of their kids is diagnosed with genetically contracted diabetes or something of the like. No amount of, what do they call it, personal responsibility and keeping fit, will protect them from this family tragedy.

Then they’ll want to convert to a standard policy, but it’ll be too late. It’s that “pre-existing disease” thingy we’ve been talking about.

It is what it is; live with it.

This just puzzles the hell out of me. We are all paying for everyone’s health care already. . . . in cost shifting, bankruptcy costs, and when businesses add their costs to the price of their product and we (even us old geezers) reimburse them at the cash register.

Why don’t we just pool everybody into one system and all share the costs in a forthright manner, and pay less dollars than we are paying today? And at the same time make our businesses more competitive with imports!

For the same amount of dollars we are spending on health care today, we could provide first class care to 100% of our population. We’d use the same private doctors, the same private hospitals and we’d have wait times no longer than we have today.

Under a single-payer universal healthcare system, no one would have to declare bankruptcy because of exhorbitant healthcare costs, where those costs are now borne by the rest of us.

Why are we spending more to avoid doing it the right way, than it would cost to do it right in the first place?

I know of no intelligent business leader that would design a system like today’s. But I do know of many politicians who would. What’s that tell you?

By Jack E. Lohman

If you’re thinking more of the same, you’re right.

It’s political corruption and the dire consequences it has on society. It cannot be ignored, no matter how hard we try.

Health care costs: You’ve heard this before. A full 31% of health care costs is administrative waste — make-work that is consumed by the insurance bureaucracy that never lays a hand on the patient. This 31% should instead be spent on doctors and nurses and hospitals. We could provide first-class care to 100% of the people for the same dollars we are spending today if we switched to a single-payer system. But the insurance industry pays massive campaign dollars to our favorite politicians to keep the system broken. Add it to your list.

Pharmaceuticals: One of the most profitable businesses in the world is hitting up congress for even more tax incentives and subsidies to justify more “medical research,” even though their 23% profit levels are calculated after deducting for R&D and high executive salaries! And then they convinced congress to give them a $780 billion Medicare Part D Drug giveaway and blocked Medicare from negotiating for lower prices. How would you like that protection in your business? Only when you give $100 million per year in campaign contributions and have members of congress as shareholders can you get away with this kind of taxpayer rip-off.

Mortgage crisis: Isn’t deregulation great? How are you liking the free market and all of that? If you thought Congress learned something after losing $1.6 billion of taxpayer money on the Savings and Loan fiasco, you haven’t seen anything yet. A lot of taxpayer money made a lot of fat cats even fatter, all thanks to a lot of campaign cash. These guys know which hands to grease. 

Income gap: As the income gap increases between the rich and poor, and the wealthy own an even bigger piece of the national pie, is it any wonder that the massive imbalance of wealth has left cities and states without funds for education, health care and other needed services? How can we invest in the infrastructure and continue transferring our national assets to the wealthy?  When CEOs demand 25% yearly increases in salary, they cut other costs, either by sending jobs overseas or reducing local worker wages. And they get their bonuses even when the company does poorly. How’s that for taking responsibility?

And our politicians sit back and watch this all happen. It’s the free market, don’cha know?

Okay, so the conservatives are right on this one. People who are energetic and ambitious will get further in life than people who are lazy and complacent. We should have only the former and none of the latter. It’s that personal responsibility thingy they keep talking about.

But look at what the free market and rise to the top has gotten us. The rich are getting very rich and the poor are getting very poor. The middle is getting smaller. You either have it or you don’t. I’ve got mine, you get yours. It’s called YOYO.

What is terribly puzzling is that the rich folks have not looked at the logical conclusion of this terribly imbalanced system. But then again, maybe they have and that’s why they are buying property in other countries. They don’t want to be here when the U.S. falls apart because of it.

Conservatives began the takeover of Congress in 1994 and it’s been downhill ever since. They like to blame the liberals but it is they who’ve had the reins. Still do, with the filibuster in the senate.

How are you liking it so far?   (read the numbers and weep!)

Related posts:

How are you liking it so far? (Part I)

Sensenbrenner Watch: It’s called “pain,” Jim.

Sensenbrenner’s rant falls on deaf ears

By Jack E. Lohman

Ok, let’s cut to the chase:

Gas prices:  It all started with the 1994 conservative takeover of congress and it got worse under the Bush administration. Deregulation of industry in general, not just energy.

The fix? All monopolistic acquisitions (oil, food, airlines) must be prohibited and the Feds must break up ExxonMobil, just as they did Standard Oil in 1911. And we must ask Iraq, politely of course, to start paying us back in oil, and we must revisit nuclear power and look at converting coal to gas.

Then Congress must authorize a new oil exploration effort to drill in the deep Gulf, and create a federally-owned entity like the U.S. Postal Service to compete with the OPEC conspiracy (where ExxonMobil is part of the problem, not part of the solution). 

Can we make this happen? It won’t be easy with Big Oil owning a piece of every congressman through their campaign contributions, and another piece of those who own oil stock (like Jim Sensenbrenner’s $1M of stock in ExxonMobil).

Talk about anti-trust; our own congressman tops the list!

Food prices: Indeed the increased farming and transportation costs due to the oil crisis are partly to blame, but the bigger problem is the congressional hands-off policy that has allowed big corporate farmers to buy up the small farm competition. Congress even gives them massive taxpayer subsidies in the process!

And now biofuels consume more energy than they save, consuming both the corn and grain we eat.

The fix?  Ban biofuels!  They are inefficient and driving food prices out of sight. Prohibit farm monopolies. Donate farm equipment to needy nations, not money or food.

Why won’t congress fix it? Follow the money and you’ll find your favorite congressman on the other end with his hand out. They receive both oil money and food money to NOT fix the system! Millions in campaign dollars from Archer Daniels Midland keeps the ethanol pot boiling. That’s our free-market Congress.

Jobs:  Unemployment is now above 5% nationally, 250,000 jobs lost this year alone. And many of those people with jobs are high tech workers flipping hamburgers because their real job was outsourced. Mothers can no longer stay home with their children because they must work to help support the family.

So get this: corporations (including Microsoft) are now lobbying congress to increase the H1B visa quota. They say they can’t find qualified workers in America, so they must import them!  At a lower wage, of course, which helps maintain high CEO salaries.

What’s the common denominator?

Our corrupt electoral system. Politicians on the take!

There’s a handful of trusted politicians, and the voters know who they are. But the rest must be fired. Bribery and payola is driving every issue, and campaign contributions are killing our nation! It doesn’t matter what your party, fixing it will take a complete turnover of politicians, both at the state and federal level. We cannot afford to keep our current government.             

By Jack E. Lohman

Rep. Don Pridemore (R-Hartford) is researching a bill that would require independent groups to disclose their financial backers, but activist organizations are objecting because they want their funding sources kept secret. And their funders want anonymity so they can fund a cause without taking the responsibility they often preach.

If a group is receiving funds from the insurance industry and is paying for ads to support politicians to block meaningful health care reform — opposite the public’s wishes and best interests — does the public have a right to know that such opposition is funded by special interests rather than ordinary people? If a personal contribution is made to this group, should that also not be disclosed?

It’s an interesting debate, especially in these days of “values” and “taking responsibility” for one’s actions. Here we could have a wealthy tycoon avoiding disclosure by giving cash to a group to fund support for a particular candidate.

A middle ground, of course, could require disclosure of corporate backers yet protect individual funders, but then local interests would cleanse their contributions through out-of-state 527s. It’s messy.

A better approach is to provide optional public funding of campaigns, where the candidate(s) choosing a public grant for campaigning receives matching funds when these groups advertise against him. That removes the incentive for groups spending on trash ads in the first place, and it actually increases the “political speech” and debate activists say they want to protect.

But, Oh. That would level the playing field, and they don’t like level playing fields. Outspending their opposition is key to their strategy, which automatically means a disparity in our electoral system.

As well, they don’t want their money going to candidates they don’t agree with.

Surprise! That is already happening through the back door, as the massive taxes that result from our corrupt political system get passed to all citizens, right and left alike. Thus all taxpayers are already paying for all campaigns, but we pay hundreds of times more than if we simply paid for the elections up front. And those who are now giving, actually pay twice.

According to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s studies, it is costing us $1300 per taxpayer per year in excessive government spending, all to appease campaign contributors. The deficit hawks should be fuming over this, but they aren’t.

Under the clean elections system, at $5 per taxpayer per year, we’d all be funding a clean political “system.” My money funds all parties and so does yours, because the system is funded by the taxpayers rather than the special interests that want expensive government giveaways (read that, taxpayer assets).

Is this constitutional? Of course it is, and politicians that claim otherwise are either totally misinformed or terribly disingenuous. Candidates can opt out if they prefer private money, but then they have to justify to the voters why they chose private funding. That’s the part they don’t like. (That “responsibility” thingy again.)

Opponents derisively call it “welfare for politicians,” but nothing could be better welfare for politicians than our current system of graft where 95% of incumbents get re-elected.

Money buys votes, and more money buys more votes, thus the rich can buy votes and the poor can’t. And incumbents are better positioned to gather money from the special interests because they have something to exchange: the ability to write laws in their favor.

And “incumbent protection” it is not, or the incumbents would have passed public funding years ago.

Clean elections make sense for the public, but that’s usually enough to draw strong opposition. You’d hope our politicians were better than that.

It’s puzzling that fiscal hawks can argue to protect the corrupt political system that is driving taxes out of sight and our state’s and nation’s economy into the ground.

Roads to nowhere? Bridges to nowhere? How about $200 million to widen I94 between Milwaukee and Illinois that will do little or nothing to relieve congestion? Follow the money and you’ll find a politician on the other end with his hand out. And perhaps even a friendly road builder.

And is all of this money going to Bill Clinton for his speeches, or really a back-door payment to Hillary to sponsor or vote for certain bills? Not that I don’t trust them, you know.

See all WDC reports here:
http://www.wisdc.org/sp052505.php 
http://www.wisdc.org/pr081103.php  
http://www.wisdc.org/grafttax2report.php  
http://www.wisdc.org/grafttax.php

By Jack E. Lohman

My recent visit to Jim Sensenbrenner’s Town Hall meeting would have been comical were it not so sad.

Sensenbrenner gets very offended when you imply that we have a corrupt political system. Like, this is the first time he’s heard about it?

“The system is working,” Jim says in his defense. “People are in jail!”

Of course some congressmen are in jail, Jim. Just not enough of them.

And the problem isn’t the illegal bribery that puts these people in jail, it’s the legal bribery that doesn’t put the rest of them there.

That corrupt system is called “campaign contributions,” and it stinks to high heaven. It has led our nation into near if not total bankruptcy, trashed the dollar bill, and destroyed our economy through deregulation of the financial and mortgage markets. All because of a massive increase in private interest dollars buying public policy.

Payola. Bribes. Regulation and deregulation is bought-and-paid-for, and Sensenbrenner denies it.

Nearly 250,000 jobs have been lost since January, and four airlines have closed up shop in just the last week. Obviously, with a $15 million net worth, Sensenbrenner doesn’t feel the pain. But the nation does.

Get this and get this straight: Our economy is not going to return until our jobs do. And the corporate cash that gave us NAFTA also created CAFTA, which Sensenbrenner voted for even after railing against it as a jobs killer.

Sensenbrenner defends lobbyists as having the same First Amendment right to petition congress as I do. And he’s right. But they petition with cash in wheelbarrows and I don’t, and that is what is destroying America.

Congressmen are allowing campaign cash to influence laws that kill US jobs and reward the companies that outsource them, but Jim takes offense at any inference of corruption.

Jim also doesn’t like talking about another conflict of interest, perhaps because it hits closer to home:

He owns a million dollars worth of pharmaceutical stocks, and voted for the $780 billion Medicare Drug Giveaway program to the pharmaceutical industry. It transfers dollars to the Pharma and insurance industry, and also mandates that Medicare not negotiate for lower drug prices. He says he voted that way ”for the seniors.” If he really cared about seniors, he should have demanded that Medicare negotiate drug prices as the VA does, as they’ve cut costs to vets in half because of it.

He owns massive oil industry stocks, including a major investment in ExxonMobil, and they must love it too. He recently voted against restricting the tax breaks and taxpayer subsidies for Exxon, which has $38 billion annual profits.

He owns $5-7 million of defense industry stocks and has been instrumental in privatizing our army in Iraq and elsewhere. Halliburton and BlackWater must love him too. We are paying them 5 to 10 times more as private contractors than we do our own troops. That’s a deal most of us would love.

Yeah, there’s a lot of love to go around, and it’s nice when you’re a multimillionaire that benefited from the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But that’s not the pain most of us felt. Our GOP congress turned a $300 billion surplus into a $600 billion deficit and started the House of Cards falling.

I wonder how they are liking in now?

Well, Jim didn’t like something, because he voted against the recent tax cuts for the poor and middle class, which he says was because it also covered those who were unemployed and paying no taxes at all.

Well, Duh! There are a lot of people that are not paying taxes today because the “fair trade” agreements he’s voted for have outsourced their jobs, and there are none available in the states so they’re unemployed as a result! And the deregulation he’s supported has trashed our economy, and nobody is hiring! So, what now?

Does he not feel any responsibility?

Sensenbrenner says he has no qualms voting on regulations that improve his private investments, and in fact, opposed legislation that would have forced all congressmen to put their investments in a blind trust. Current policy is worse than insider trading.

Sensenbrenner uses his town hall meetings as a campaign forum, and gets free taxpayer funding to support them. Perhaps if his opponent (Jim Burkee) were offered the same, this wouldn’t be such an issue.

By Jack E. Lohman

Everybody has an opinion about the trend toward “for-profit” healthcare. Some say the free-market delivery of medicine will reduce costs, while others claim that the profit motive diminishes quality and increases costs. The evidence supports the latter.

Dr. John Geyman, in his heavily sourced book, The Corrosion of Medicine, points out that the for-profit hospital chain “Tenet has hospitals in California that mark up their operating room charges by 800 percent and charge more than 12 times as much for chest x-rays (two views) than public hospitals.”

So much for private being less expensive than public.

Geyman points to the quality pitfalls of investor-owned health care versus not-for-profit care:

For-profit hospital costs run 3 to 13 percent higher, with higher overhead, fewer nurses, and death rates 6 to 7 percent higher. (18-23)

For-profit HMOs have higher overhead (25 to 33 percent for some of the largest HMOs); worse scores on 14 of 14 quality indicators reported to National Committee for Quality Assurance. (24-26)

For-profit Dialysis Centers have death rates 30 percent higher, with 26 percent less use of transplants. (27-28 )

For-profit Nursing Homes have lower staffing levels and worse quality of care (30 percent committed violations that caused death or life-threatening harm to patients). (29)

In for-profit Mental Health Centers, Medicare expelled 80 programs after investigations found that 91 percent of their claims were fraudulent(30); for-profit behavioral health companies impose restrictive barriers and limits to care (e.g., premature discharge from hospitals without adequate outpatient care). (31)

So much for private being higher in quality than public. 

These stories persist across the country, and for logical reason. CEOs of for-profit hospitals, HMOs, PPOs, nursing homes and dialysis centers are, by law, required to do everything in their power to maximize profits for investors. Even without a law executives will maximize their own salaries, bonuses and stock value.

That means cutting costs, which translates to denying patient care wherever possible, either by denying costly procedures like cancer treatments and transplants, or needed tests like MRIs and nuclear scanning, or by cutting their nurse-to-patient ratios (which is driving nurses out of the industry).

Physicians can advocate on behalf of the patient, but now that they are becoming employees of the for-profit hospitals, even they are walking on thin ice.

The argument goes that politicians should not control health care because they can’t do anything right. And that’s usually true because they are bought off by special interests that want them to do everything wrong. The current healthcare system is evidence of that.

But put them and their families under the same health care system everybody else has, as Healthy Wisconsin does, and they’ll do it right. At least they can be trusted more than the private executives that are paid on the basis of how much care they can deny.

Put congressmen under Medicare and even that system will be cleaned up overnight!

Better yet, put every U.S. citizen under Medicare and let’s totally eliminate the 31% of waste caused by the insurance bureaucracy! Eliminate all of the other bureaucracies like Medicaid and BadgerCare, and let’s get this system fixed once and for all so we can move on to other major national challenges!

A Medicare-for-all system, covering even government employees, will not only reduce health care costs for us all, it’ll reduce the extra taxes we pay for public employee healthcare. How can that be argued against?

Yes, there are things that must be fixed in Medicare, like fraud and overuse. But those are far worse under the private system that does not punish offenders with jail time.

But — and you must be as tired of hearing this as I am of saying it — the politicians are being paid off by the healthcare industry to NOT fix the problems.

I’ll put my money on the special interests winning this before we do.

Sources from Dr. Geyman’s book:

18. Chen J, et al. Do “America’s Best Hospitals” perform better for acute myocardial infarction? N Engl J Med 340:286, 1999

19. Hartz A. J., et al. Hospital characteristics and mortality rates. N Engl J Med 321: 1720, 1989.

20. Kover C. & Gergen P.J. Nurse staffing levels and adverse events following surgery in U.S. hospitals. Image J Nurs Scholarship 30:315, 1998.

21. Silverman E.M., et al. The association between for-profit hospital ownership and increased Medicare spending. N Engl J Med 341:420, 1999.

22. Woolhandler S. & Himmelstein D. U. Costs of care and administration at for-profit and other hospitals in the United States. N Engl J Med 36:769, 1997.

23. Yuan Z. The association between hospital type and mortality and length of stay: A study of 16.9 million hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries, Med Care 38:231, 2000.

24. Himmelstein D. U., et al. Quality of care in investor-owned vs not-for-profit HMOs. JAMA 282:159, 1999.

25. HMO honor roll. U.S. News and World report October 23, 1997, p62.

26. Kuttner R. The American health care system: Wall Street and health care. N Engl J Med 340:664, 1999.

27. Devereaux P.J., et al. Comparison of mortality between private for-profit and private not-for-profit hemodialysis centers: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA 288:2449, 2002.

28. Garg R.P., et al. Effect of the ownership of dialysis facilities on patients’ survival and referral for transplantation. N Engl J Med 341:1653, 1999.

29. Harrington C., et al. Does investor-ownership of nursing homes compromise the quality of care? Am J Public Health 91(9):1, 2001.

30. Wrich J Brief Summary of Audit Findings of Managed Behavioral Health Services. Chicago: J. Wrich & Associates, 1998.

31. Munoz R. How health care insurers avoid treating mental illness. San Diego Union Tribune, May 22, 2002.

This is an absolutely excellent book, and the above reflects perhaps .01% of its useful data. If you are serious about what’s wrong with healthcare, you’ll find the answers here.      

by Jack E. Lohman

Follow the money, if you can.

It would make sense that if we are going to stay in Iraq, Iraq should offset our costs by paying us in oil. Not overpaying us, just fairly paying us. Our presence wouldn’t have to cost us a penny and, since our Iraq efforts helped trash our economy, they can help us out of our mess.

Of course ExxonMobil wouldn’t like that because the Iraqi oil would be competing with their oil, and their prices couldn’t remain at $3.29 a gallon.

And guys like U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wouldn’t like it because he owns roughly $1 million in ExxonMobil stock and gets campaign contributions from oil industry executives. He even voted against the recent bill to eliminate tax breaks and subsidies for the oil industry, and he refused to support a non-conflict-of-interest bill by U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders. Good goin’ Jim. Your loyalties are showing through.

And other politicians that own oil stocks and receive oil industry contributions won’t like it either. And most certainly the congressmen that plan to retire and become industry lobbyists won’t like it. Nor will George Bush.

That leaves just you and me and 300 million other Americans that would like it.

But we don’t count for all the obvious reasons. Otherwise they’d not only make Iraq pay us in oil, they’d implement a competitive system like we have between the post office and the UPS/FedEx crowd. Delivering packages today would likely be double the cost were it not for the U.S. Mail providing competitive services.

We need a U.S. Oil Service too. We should commission the Army Corp of Engineers to drill for oil in the deep gulf, or wherever. Or even subcontract it to a private entity as we have with Medicare.

But this oil exploration must be taxpayer funded and publicly controlled. Actually we are already paying for this in tax breaks and subsidies and price gouging, so let’s formalize the deal and benefit from it.

Let’s replace the so-called free market oil industry that isn’t a free market at all. It’s controlled by the OPEC conspiracy and has a willing co-conspirator in ExxonMobil, who is making $38 Billion a year in profits and feeding a portion back to the politicians that make it all happen.

The Republicans should know all of this and should be mad as hell, because “free market” is supposedly their thing.

But they aren’t, because they and most Democrats are in on the deal. They not only take money from companies that pay them cash dollars to write or block laws, they make investment profits on these same companies that they should regulate but instead de-regulate.

In the business world we call this corruption. In politics we call it normal. In November we must call it over.

What’s that old saying? Be careful of what you ask for?

Well, U.S. automakers got what they wanted, no tightened C.A.F.E. standards. Which left the Japanese to overtake American automakers in gas efficiency, and now the Big Three honchos are wishing for a do-over. Duh!

And I sure hope I’m wrong, but this recession may be our Great Awakening. We had a war to help us out of the 1929 crash, and we can surely muster another one of those. But this time we have globalization and any new jobs we create will go to other countries. Except perhaps for defence jobs, and even there we can’t be sure.

Isn’t the free market great? How are you liking it so far?

By Jack E. Lohman         

This may not be mainstream thinking, but it seems silly to me to tax corporations only to have them pass those taxes back to us in higher product prices. And worse, after they’ve added their exorbitant costs for tax avoidance lawyers and accountants, which also get passed on to consumers. Or worse yet, they move out of the state and take their jobs with them.

As bad as the nation’s economy is, our patriotic CEOs keep outsourcing our jobs. Good guys these.

Anyway, let’s make corporate taxes zero, at least for “good” corporations that are loyal to Wisconsin. And then let’s brag like hell about it to attract other corporations and jobs to the state, and keep those that are here.

Base the zero-tax rate on whether corporate CEOs and executives remain in the state and pay taxes, and don’t outsource jobs to other states or countries. But in the process let’s ensure that they can’t pay their CEOs through “management” companies in another state to avoid personal taxes here.

Corporations currently pay only 3% of our state revenues, the third lowest collection in the country. Let’s be the lowest. Increase my taxes by 3% and make theirs zero. I’ll get it back in lower product prices, and we’ll have more tax-paying jobs in our state, which may even offset the need to increase mine.

Two of the things that drive companies out of the state are taxes and higher-than-normal health care costs. A third is labor costs, but that’s an issue for another day.

But our business leaders seem to support the very pay-to-play political system that perpetuates these problems. Wisconsin Manufacturers Commerce loves it, even though it drives up taxes and protects the insurance bureaucracy that drives up health care. But WMC also sells insurance and has insurance members, a potential conflict that could be detrimental to its other members.

Would companies like Miller Brewery be considering leaving the state if we had zero corporate taxes and a Healthy Wisconsin to reign in health care costs? I doubt it. Will politicians fix either system? Not without pressure. They like the current cash flow to their campaign coffers.

Yes, we should blame the health care industry, but more so, we must blame the politicians that are taking cash dollars to write or block laws that benefit their campaign contributors. Blame the Democrats for not pushing zero taxation for corporations, and the Republicans for blocking health care reform. Blame them both for passing laws that send taxpayer assets to favored corporations, which in the process drives up all taxes for corporations and taxpayers.

But also blame the corporate CEOs and WMC for perpetuating this corrupt political system. There is a high price to pay for political corruption, and we need only look at what it’s done for Mexico.

We’re heading there too. Get used to it.

Few corporate leaders would tolerate an employee taking cash from a vendor on the side, and trading corporate assets in return. They’d fire him, maybe even have him jailed.

Yet they don’t think twice when sending cash to politicians that do exactly the same thing. They give away taxpayer assets to fill their campaign coffers, and that seems okay.

Are we having fun yet? At what point in time are we going to stop politicians from giving away our state and country? Can anybody look at the current economy and claim that campaign contributions have no role in the tumble?

Would, you know, “regulation” have prevented the current money crisis? Or is the same “free market” that got us into it, going to get us out of it?

And while regulation won’t work with OPEC, the U.S. does have options if the politicians would get out of Exxon’s pocket.

As a disclosure, I’m retired, employed by no one, and I like it that way.  I’ve paid more than my share of taxes, and I would hope for decreases in my retirement years. Mainly I don’t like the political corruption that will ultimately destroy America, and I don’t like CEOs and politicians in my pocket.

By Jack E. Lohman

Healthy Wisconsin is on everybody’s lips, primarily because healthcare is into everybody’s wallet. It’s getting worse, but doesn’t have to be that way.

HW changes the way medicine is paid for; not the way it is provided. Its only problem now is political.

Healthy Wisconsin strengths:

• * Its biggest change is in the structure. Rather than employers paying a middleman insurance company, they instead pay a flat 10.5% percentage of wages (which replaces the 15% many are now paying for employee health insurance). That’s a 4.5% savings, about $2 billion saved for employers.
• * Employees would pay 4% of wages, which would be offset by a 16% increase in benefits, such as adding limited vision, dental for children, mental parity, pharmaceuticals, and the extension to family coverage for all. Complete portability is provided when changing or losing jobs, and pre-existing diseases are a thing of the past.
• * Employers would no longer be involved in heath care, and Wisconsinites are no longer obligated to take an employer plan or even a family plan. Every family member can make their own choice between either a health care network (HCN) or the traditional fee-for-service (FFS). Every family is covered, though none are locked into a family plan.
• * Doctors and hospitals remain private and send their bills to a central payment administrator rather than to the 450 statewide insurance companies (or 1500, if we allow cross-border insurers). This drastically reduces their billing overhead and these savings are included in the total $1.8 billion projected.
• * The systemic changes eliminate the costs that add nothing to healthcare, like insurance broker commissions, actuarial costs, costs for cherry-picking and gatekeeping, high executive salaries and the ever-rising shareholder profits. Even the insurer’s high costs for lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians that were passed on to the patient are eliminated under Healthy Wisconsin. These are all gone, though it also explains the massive opposition from the insurance industry and their politician supporters.
• * HW provides major savings to most businesses and therefore fewer will outsource jobs to countries that have no employer contribution for healthcare. More businesses will open, remain open, and relocate to Wisconsin as a result. The Wal-marts and McDonalds of the world will now start paying their fair share, but few taxpayers will object to that.
• * While some small business owners objected to the earlier version of HW, the new version provides a three-year phase-in period, which should be quite palatable. As well, a cap of $102,000 in wages taxed has been placed on two-earner families.

In spite of the frivolous scare tactics used by the proponents of a status quo approach to health care, Wisconsin would not become a magnet for the unemployed or immigrants. Most already have free Medicaid coverage in their own state, thus relocating families is a foolish option.

No matter how important the HW proposal is to the people and businesses in Wisconsin, there remains an insurance industry that wants to continue drawing profits from the medical field, and politicians who receive their contributions. Hopefully they will all realize that as HW improves the state’s economy, other insurance markets will emerge and the state will grow accordingly.

Prior to retiring four years ago I owned a company with 70 employees in four states (40 in Wisconsin). Had Healthy Wisconsin been in effect at that time, I would have indeed closed my offices in three states and moved the jobs to Wisconsin.

Importantly, a year after selling my company the buyer did move offices. They closed Wisconsin and moved the jobs to the east coast. Had HW been in effect at that time, I seriously doubt that would have happened. Instead I think they would have moved their other offices here instead.

How many more jobs are we losing because of our high health care costs?

My guess is, a lot.