Waste, Fraud, and Abuse
A billion here and a billion there and, pretty soon, you're talking about real money.
Medicare Paid Insurers Billions for Questionable Home Diagnoses, Watchdog Finds
If you put a rule in place, people will figure out how to make money from it.
Medicare insurers visited older people in their homes to assess their health in situ, charging almost $2,000 per visit. Of course, they diagnosed things. That’s the whole point of the visit.
As they said in Braveheart: “Well, we didn’t get dressed up for nothing.”
But the Medicare insurers didn’t treat the afflictions they found, suggesting that the diagnoses were incorrect..
‘Private Medicare insurers got about $4.2 billion in extra federal payments in 2023 for diagnoses from home visits the companies initiated, even though they led to no treatment, a new inspector general’s report says.
‘The extra payments were triggered by diagnoses documented based on the visits, including potentially inaccurate ones, for which patients received no other medical services, the report says. Insurers offering private plans under Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage, are paid more when patients have costly conditions.’
Argentina’s economy minister strikes defiant note on default risk
Argentina wants to repay its foreign creditors without having to resort to yet another restructuring, but it may be a tough order given limited reserve generation and restricted access to global capital markets.
Argentina is a contained case. What happens when large Western governments seek to restructure their debt, if they do?
It’s far more likely that they use the tools of financial repression such as inflation.
‘“Of course not, never,” the former Wall Street trader tells the Financial Times in a joint interview at the presidential palace with President Javier Milei. “Our commitment to pay our creditors is absolute, total.”’
America's Largest Federal Employee Union Condemns "DHS Bureaucrat Watchlist"
Name the member.
‘The American Federation of Government Employees, the nation's largest union representing federal employees, strongly condemns the "DHS Bureaucrat Watchlist" released today by the far-right American Accountability Foundation. The watchlist was created through a grant by the Heritage Foundation, the authors of Project 2025.
‘This "watchlist" ominously names individual civil servants and includes a tipline to for recommending additions to this list of so-called "subversive bureaucrats."’
The Biden/Harris bureaucrat watchlist goes live TODAY
People assume things about institutions. One of them is that everyone who works for the institution is a policy-neutral instrument for implementing the policy developed at higher levels We’ve described this previously as quaint and archaic.
Here’s more on the DHS list.
‘A couple months back, the American Accountability Foundation announced that – thanks to generous support from the Heritage Foundation – we would be publishing a list naming the subversive, leftist bureaucrats serving in the Federal government who cannot be trusted to enforce our immigration laws under a future administration intent on securing our border.’
The planet is burning and the World Bank appears to have mis-spent billions of dollars.
Isn’t this akin to a war crime?
‘Bungling World Bank bureaucrats lost track of at least $24 billion bankrolling the battle against climate change, according to a bombshell report by a left-leaning charity group.
‘An investigation by Oxfam revealed “poor record-keeping practices” by the DC-based international lender that resulted in anywhere between $24 billion and $41 billion in misplaced funds.
‘The agency’s audit showed “a lack of traceable spending” over the past seven years — partly because of an oddball accounting practice in which the bank accounts for its climate financing at the time of a project’s approval rather than at the time of project completion, according to the report released last week.’
Quantifying the Super-Villains
Incentives matter.
Cut the payments you make for medical device innovation and, presto, you will get less medical device innovation.
‘We investigate the effects of substantial Medicare price reductions in the medical device industry, which amounted to a 61% decrease over 10 years for certain device types. Analyzing over 20 years of administrative and proprietary data, we find these price cuts led to a 25% decline in new product introductions and a 75% decrease in patent filings, indicating significant reductions in innovation activity. Manufacturers decreased market entry and increased outsourcing to foreign producers, associated with higher rates of product defects. Our calculations suggest the value of lost innovation may fully offset the direct cost savings from the price cuts. We propose that better-targeted pricing reforms could mitigate these negative effects. These findings underscore the need to balance cost containment with incentives for innovation and quality in policy design.’