That's a quote from an email sent to the government's chief actuary on medicare, a 30 year civil servant, to keep him from telling Congress how much a bill the Bush administration was trying to push cost.
I'd like to make this more clear, because this is something that should piss off republicans more than it does me, I'd think: the administration was wrong about the price of a bill.
The guy whose job it is to know how much these things cost was told he couldn't tell congress the actual price of the bill by the administration. The justification? Executive privilege.
There's no real precedent for the grounds upon which Condi was claiming executive privilege. There is no precedent for the NSA being asked to testify before congress. The argument against it centered on its disingenuity, as Condi's been talking her head off about the same topic she refused to talk to the 9/11 committee about in every public forum available. The precedent's very clear on this - what the administration did is criminal.
Quote:[size=25]'The consequences for insubordination are extremely severe'[/size]
The Wall Street Journal moves the ball forward in a major way today on the Medicare cost estimate scandal, obtaining a copy of an email written during congressional debate in which Medicare's actuary was warned specifically not to share the truth with Congress.
Specifically, the actuary was told to "work up the numbers," and was warned, "The consequences for insubordination are extremely severe."
Medicare's chief actuary was warned last year that he could be accused of "insubordination" if he shared information with Congress about a White House-backed prescription-drug bill without the approval of his politically appointed superiors, according to e-mails he has made public.
The June 20 directive to Medicare actuary Richard Foster came in an e-mail from the top aide to Thomas Scully, then the administrator for the health-care program. "Work up the numbers and share them with Tom Scully only. NO ONE ELSE" reads the message from Jeffery Flick, the last portion in bold-faced capital letters. A second warning, also in bold-face, follows in the same message: "The consequences for insubordination are extremely severe."
Mr. Scully, now a private consultant in Washington, has denied he threatened to fire the actuary, whose office has traditionally been a source of independent assessment of Medicare costs.
Scully can deny all he wants, but the email the WSJ obtained speaks for itself. If the line about "extremely severe" consequences for "insubordination" were not a threat to fire Foster, what did the comment mean?
Of course, the email bolsters Foster's story and more or less gets him off the hook. Sure, it was his job to release accurate data about the costs of the plan, but it now appears obvious that he was forced to withhold information from lawmakers.
The email also suggests a coordinated approach to deceive members of Congress.
The e-mail exchange begins with the actuary informing Mr. Scully of three information requests, one from a Republican and two from Democrats. Mr. Foster promises to provide advanced copies of "our intended response." The answer from Mr. Flick, then Mr. Scully's administrative assistant, says the answer to the first request, from House Republicans, can proceed. But the remaining two, both from Democrats, should be held until Mr. Scully authorizes the release.
"Tom was very explicit," writes Mr. Flick, who didn't return several phone calls.
The CBO is the official arbiter for the cost of all bills, and Mr. Scully has always insisted that Democrats were fishing for information no longer relevant to the legislation. But according to the e-mail exchange, one Democratic request dealt with one of the most important sections of the final legislation -- and the biggest single cost discrepancy between Mr. Foster's estimates and those of the CBO.
This certainly isn't going away. In fact, we may be learning more once we get some of these folks under oath.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R., Calif.) has signaled that Mr. Foster may testify publicly next week before his panel, where the actuary is sure to be questioned on the matter. Democrats are demanding to know more about any communications between Mr. Scully and the White House related to the actuary's role. "This decision was made higher up," says Rep. Robert Matsui (D, Calif.), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Hmm. How much "higher up"?
Not only has the bill been pushed through congress by dubious means, but its just about the most assbackwards Medicare policy imaginable.
Consider:
The bill was no less than 681 pages of stupfyingly technical prose. Its a safe bet that none of the politicians who voted for or against the bill took the time to read it, relying instead on the analysis of the bills proponants, newspapers, and in pathetically few cases, medical professionals.
The creator of the bill, Thomas A Scully, the former federal administrator of Medicare, resigned from his post shortly after the bill was passed. He then promptly auctioned himself off to the the prescription drug companies, offering his services as a lobbyist willing to use his intimate knowledge of the bill to help the large drug comapanies exploit it for as much profit as possible.
There is at least one other criminal investigation underway regarding the bill, this one headed by the the FBI:
Quote:The House Ethics Committee and the FBI launched investigations into whether G.O.P. members of the House offered fellow Republican Nick Smith of Michigan a bribe -- in the form of a hefty contribution to his son's congressional campaign -- to vote for the measure on November 22
Source
The bill effectively shifts the burdern for health care into the hands of the private sector, and it doing so, ensures that the prime motivation of those responsible for keeping America healthy will be
profit rather than
quality of care. Its bulls
hit.
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