Who wants cradle to grave?

[American_Jihad]

Is President Obama Creating A Nation Of Dependents?

1/26/12



If the Republican primaries are any indication, one big debate in the upcoming election will be whether President Obama is pushing the country toward a European-style welfare culture.

---

"Once we thought 'entitlement' meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed in the greatest country in the world," Romney said in a recent speech. "But today the new entitlement battle is over the size of the check you get from Washington."

Is Obama Creating A Nation Of Dependents? Nearly Half Now Get Government Benefits - Investors.com

Baby Huey Beck probably didn't tell you that most food stamp recipients are the elderly and children.

Being a retired baby boomer, I can tell you where those elderly came from - more older people in our country than ever before.

Being a human being who can read, I also know where the hungry children came from - high unemployement because of the #$%^&*( pubs as led by the worst president in our history, GWBush.

So, rw's, what do you propose to do about all those old people and all those children who are now getting food stamps?

Thanks to the pubpots, we're running low on ice floes but there are probably still enough to set them all afloat to die.

Idiots.

Hey old geezer, I heard 1946 was a bad year, they ran out of coat hangers...

Oh Ya, both parties suck, obongo is bush on steroids...

 

[American_Jihad]

A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss

December 10, 2012
By Bruce Thornton

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Reining in entitlement spending, then, is the major problem that everybody needs to focus on. And a good place to start is Nicholas Eberstadt’s A Nation of Takers. Eberstadt’s grim documentation of the reckless expansion of what he calls the “vast and colossal empire of entitlement payments that it [the state] protects, manages, and finances,” and his analysis of the ill effects such transfers have had on the American character should be read by everyone serious about the fiscal threats to our way of life.

Redistributing wealth through programs like income maintenance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance has become the federal government’s most important function. This development would have astonished the Founders, who codified national security and defense as the national government’s primary role. And this momentous shift has led to an accelerating number of Americans on some sort of dole. In the early 1980s, 30% of Americans received at least one government benefit. By 2011 just over 49% were. The costs of this increase have accelerated as well. In 1960, entitlement spending by government at all levels was $24 billion in today’s dollars. In 2011, the cost was almost $2.2 trillion. As Eberstadt glumly prophesizes, we are heading for “the day in which entitlement spending comes to exceed all other activities of all levels and branches of the U.S. government.”

---
Yet despite this looming disaster, President Obama and the Democrats have taken entitlement reform off the table in the current negotiations over the “fiscal cliff.” Indeed, Obama’s latest offer included $600 billion in vague future spending cuts, but $200 billion in new spending along with $1.6 trillion in new taxes. According to economist Keith Hennessy, in reality this offer would lead to a spending increase, not a reduction. Clearly, Obama is not interested in heading off the fiscal disaster Eberstadt documents. Rather, he is pursuing the old progressive dream of income equality through the redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, for future generations that dream will be a nightmare of bankruptcy at home and compromised national security abroad.

A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss

 

[Lakhota]

 

[American_Jihad]

Who will pay for socialist lifestyle?​

December 11, 2012
RAYMOND KRASKO


To the single females, all young voters, African-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Asians and others — congratulations on your victorious election of President Obama. Now think what you did to yourselves and this country.

You elected a tax-and-spend big government socialist president who wants to take care of you from cradle to grave, and a lot of you have sucked up on this lifestyle. Now let's see who has the money to pay (with taxes) for this lifestyle. They will be moving their money overseas. That leaves you to pay the taxes.

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Read more: Who will pay for socialist lifestyle? | hispanics, socialist, latinos - YumaSun

 

[American_Jihad]

In Love With Easeful Death​

January 25, 2013
By Bruce Bawer

...

Gregg contrasts this intensely vital America with the nations of Europe that, since World War II, have rejected U.S.-style liberal democracy in favor of social democracy, subordinating individual liberty to cradle-to-grave communal security and allowing their economic vigor to be smothered by, as Gregg puts it, the “dead hand of the state.” If indeed what Europeans enjoy today is a kind of “easeful death,” it is a death that many of them would die rather than give up. Frenchmen who can’t bring themselves to get up in the morning and go to work – preferring instead to live on generous government benefits – are nonetheless able to spend days on end marching in the streets, stopping traffic, ranting at gendermes, and mounting the barricades, Les Miz-style, in protest against even the slightest proposed rollback in those handouts.

...

Perhaps the sanest, wisest, and most responsible leader in Europe today is Czech president Václav Klaus, who unlike most of his counterparts on the continent has no illusions about the facts before him. “Europeans are not interested in capitalism and free markets,” he complained in a 2011 speech quoted by Gregg, “and do not understand that their current behavior undermines the very institutions that made their past success possible.” Alas, the number of Americans about whom the same might be said is higher than ever and still rising, with no end in sight to the self-destructive self-delusion.

In Love With Easeful Death

 

[American_Jihad]

John Dickerson: Disconnect between reality and Obama speech ​

13 February 2013

The president’s State of the Union address was more than 6,000 words, but its message to voters could fit inside a single tweet: I am full of ideas that will directly affect your life, but these people in the audience are blocking them.

The president brought a ton of proposals on Tuesday night: universal preschool, tax reform, immigration reform, a minimum-wage increase, a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions, infrastructure investments, new housing incentives, manufacturing incentives, energy plans, a program for scoring college education by affordability and paycheck equity. They all seemed to have ready-made hashtags: #manufacturinghub, #fixitfirst, and #collegescorecard.

...

The president built his speech around using government to create “a rising, thriving middle class,” which he said will help shrink the budget deficit through creating economic growth. That growth will come through investment from the programs he was suggesting. He had a suggestion for every stage of life from nearly cradle to grave, starting with universal preschool, secondary education and college assistance all the way through the earning years to retirement when retirees will need a retooled Medicare.

...

John Dickerson: Disconnect between reality and Obama speech | Dallas Morning News Opinion and Editorial Columns - Opinion and Commentary for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News

 

[francoHFW]

Pub dupes- ready to fight to the death for their right to be absolutey SCREWED by greedy megarich idiots...

 

[jasonnfree]

Who will pay for socialist lifestyle?​

December 11, 2012
RAYMOND KRASKO


To the single females, all young voters, African-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Asians and others — congratulations on your victorious election of President Obama. Now think what you did to yourselves and this country.

You elected a tax-and-spend big government socialist president who wants to take care of you from cradle to grave, and a lot of you have sucked up on this lifestyle. Now let's see who has the money to pay (with taxes) for this lifestyle. They will be moving their money overseas. That leaves you to pay the taxes.

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Read more: Who will pay for socialist lifestyle? | hispanics, socialist, latinos - YumaSun

So you think Obama's a socialist. His actions speak otherwise. Look at his cabinet appointments and czars. Not even one liberal, much less socialist. Van Jones maybe, but he was cut loose very early on by Obama. Tell me some of the socialist things he's done and maybe I'll be convinced. Forget Obamacare, it's a mandate to buy insurance from corporations. Look at the trade deals he's cut including the upcoming TPP which he will sign I'm almost certain. A socialist wouldn't do these things. He's a blue dog corporate democrat .

 

[francoHFW]

Pragmatic centrist. vs trolls...lol

 

[Londoner]

They system is owned by private sector wealth, most of it corporate.

Concentrated private sector wealth funds elections and staffs government.

Concentrated private sector wealth runs a primary challenge against any politician that does not vote for their special interests.

Concentrated private sector wealth spends billions a year lobbying politicians so they vote correctly.

Concentrated private sector wealth pours money into thinks tanks, publishing groups, television stations, talk radio and websites FOR THE PURPOSE of convincing the OP that the system is not owned by business, which shares its profits with politicians in order to rig the game.

The OP's information sources never talk about the amount of subsidies and bailouts given to business.

FDR's New Deal for the middle class was transformed into Reagan's New Deal for business.

Our government has been purchased by the market winners.

Welcome to the final phase of capitalism. Monopolies for the wealthy and debt for the impoverished working poor.

 

[American_Jihad]

Who will pay for socialist lifestyle?​

December 11, 2012
RAYMOND KRASKO


To the single females, all young voters, African-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Asians and others — congratulations on your victorious election of President Obama. Now think what you did to yourselves and this country.

You elected a tax-and-spend big government socialist president who wants to take care of you from cradle to grave, and a lot of you have sucked up on this lifestyle. Now let's see who has the money to pay (with taxes) for this lifestyle. They will be moving their money overseas. That leaves you to pay the taxes.

---


Read more: Who will pay for socialist lifestyle? | hispanics, socialist, latinos - YumaSun

So you think Obama's a socialist. His actions speak otherwise. Look at his cabinet appointments and czars. Not even one liberal, much less socialist. Van Jones maybe, but he was cut loose very early on by Obama. Tell me some of the socialist things he's done and maybe I'll be convinced. Forget Obamacare, it's a mandate to buy insurance from corporations. Look at the trade deals he's cut including the upcoming TPP which he will sign I'm almost certain. A socialist wouldn't do these things. He's a blue dog corporate democrat .

jasonnfreeloader, your an Idiot this thread is loaded with posts of all the information you seek you just have to get off yo lazy ass and open your eyes. I checked out the threads you started, your a rabid socialist/liberal and just blowing smoke just like your buddy Londoner...

 

[American_Jihad]

America’s Food for Votes Program

2/18/13
WENDY MCELROY, THE FREEMAN

During his 2012 bid to become the Republican nominee for President, Newt Gingrich repeatedly called Barack Obama “the food-stamp President.” From the time Obama assumed office in January 2009 through October 2012, the number of people on food stamps spiked from 31.9 million to 47.5, according to the U.S. government’s own data. That is a rise of nearly 50 percent to a peak of 1 in 7 Americans and 1 in 4 children participating. The program’s cost has more than doubled in four years, from $30 billion to $72 billion. So, it seems, there was plenty of bread to go with the electoral circus.

The food stamp program’s new name is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Critics claim it is economically unsustainable, widely abused, and the harbinger of a colossal welfare state. Advocates insist SNAP is the result of recession—a humanitarian necessity—and that food is a human right. But it is difficult to square food-stamp humanitarianism with other policies issuing from the White House, which add up to an attempt to make people dependent.

Ulterior Motives?

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And that’s not all.

In the months prior to the 2012 Presidential election, the USDA actively promoted “food stamp parties.” In an article entitled “Food Stamps: Both Obama and Republicans Are to Blame for Record Crisis,” Cato Budget Analyst Tad DeHaven quoted the toolkit guide used to promote the celebrations. “Throw a Great Party. Host social events where people mix and mingle . . . Make it fun by having activities, games, food, and entertainment, and provide information about SNAP. Putting SNAP information in a game format like BINGO, crossword puzzles, or even a ‘true/false’ quiz is fun and helps get your message across in a memorable way.” In other campaigns, large cash awards were given to those who signed up the most people. The latter fact may have encouraged bureaucrats, rather than high-ranking officials, to ramp up the program.

There are political advantages to expanding programs like SNAP.
President Obama has never hidden his goal to redistribute wealth in America.

SNAP is forced redistribution on at least three levels:

■First, taxes from the rich and middle classes enrich the poor.

■Second, crony capitalists benefit. For example, JPMorgan administers the debit cards through which food assistance is distributed. The fiscal watchdog Government Accountability Institute claims that the company’s contracts in 18 of the 24 states it manages have brought in at least $560,492,596.02 since 2004.

■Third, immense bureaucratic structures are established at the federal level. Entitlements thus lock in the allegiance and votes of both those who receive benefits and those whose livelihood now depends upon administering the programs, which paves an easier path to election as supplicants show up to “pay” with their votes.

Runaway entitlements thus weaken the political opposition. For example, Republicans’ demand for restraint gets recast as callousness. But more importantly, entitlements weaken the free market, which is the true ideological enemy of all ambitious politicians, Democrat and Republican alike.

...

America's Food for Votes Program - The Moral Liberal

 

[American_Jihad]

MSNBC-Melissa Harris-Perry says "kids belong to whole communities"​

4/7/13
by Mike Shortridge

...


“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had a private notion of children, your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children.

So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

...

Read more: MSNBC-Melissa Harris-Perry says "kids belong to whole communities" | Washington Times Communities


---> http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...6-why-liberals-prefer-dogs-over-children.html

...

 

[American_Jihad]

Entitlements: What Difference Does it Make?​

By Christopher Chantrill
May 7, 2013


Last week they announced the results of the second year of the Oregon experiment, asking the important question: what difference does Medicaid make? The answer, as Megan McArdle reports, is not much, at least not in measurable health outcomes.

In this the Oregon experiment agrees with the experts. The RAND study done in the 1970s and reported in the 1980s found that giving people health insurance didn't make a difference to their health; it just increased their consumption of health care. And that aligns with the experts cited by James C. Riley in Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History. Health care (called bio-medicine) is just one of six factors ("public health, medicine, wealth and income, nutrition, behavior, and education") undergirding our healthy, wealthy way of life. You can check out the details at my "Experts Agree on Healthcare" here.

But that Oregon result set me to thinking not just about government healthcare but entitlements in general.

Isn't the whole point of entitlements that they don't really make much of a difference? I mean that if, e.g., Medicaid doesn't make a difference, it really doesn't matter, except the waste of money. Same with education. We know that the education system stinks, but America still seems to rub along.

We know that when you go the full metal jacket on government, where government runs everything as in the totalitarian Soviet Union or Maoist China, the result is mass starvation, and worse.

...

Read more: Articles: Entitlements: What Difference Does it Make?

 

[Agit8r]

Obama wants to subsidize your life from cradle to grave

7/17/12

On radio this morning, Glenn spent the opening few minutes looking at the political philosophy of Barack Obama and what his policies reveal about the role of government. Unsurprisingly, he finds Obama to be one of the worst big government progressives of all time. But how bad is it? Worse than you’d think.

He started off by referencing a quote from Ross Douthat from a New York Times opinion piece:

“[T]he slide show’s vision of the individual’s relationship to the state seems designed to vindicate every conservative critique of the Obama-era Democratic Party. The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.”

Glenn said this is a much more eloquent way of summarizing Barack Obama’s philosophy than he would ever be able to articulate it.

He then played Obama’s shocking audio regarding individual success:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

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Obama wants to subsidize your life from cradle to grave – Glenn Beck

"Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You". John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961...
Sorry JFK it's the new progressive liberal America...................

Straw Man.

"we can be guided throughout by Lincoln's simple maxim: that we will do collectively, through our government, only those things that we cannot do as well, or at all individually and privately"
-- Barack Obama; from 'Audacity of Hope"

 

[American_Jihad]

Amnesty and the Welfare State Don’t Mix

Kelsey Harris
May 6, 2013


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF6FPdKr1PU]News Conference: Heritage Details Amnesty Costs - YouTube[/ame]

Heritage’s highly anticipated report on the cost of amnesty, released earlier today, puts the price tag at $6.3 trillion—a figure that becomes available as the Senate prepares for a May 9 markup of the “comprehensive” immigration reform bill proposed by the “Gang of Eight.”

Heritage, the only organization that has done an analysis of the cost of amnesty, advocates for immigration reform that inspires economic growth, attracts workers, and encourages patriotic assimilation. But “amnesty for those who are here unlawfully,” Heritage President Jim DeMint said, “is not necessary to capture those benefits. Our analysis shows that taxpayers, including immigrants who have come here lawfully, will be saddled with $6.3 trillion in costs over the next 50 years.”

...

Those broken promises show that Congress can’t be trusted to address immigration reform in such a way, with an amnesty-first proposal. “Amnesty is unfair to those who come here lawfully and those who are waiting,” DeMint said. “It will cost the American taxpayers trillions of dollars over the next several decades, and it will make our immigration problems worse.”

Amnesty and the Welfare State Don?t Mix

 

[American_Jihad]

Executive Summary

Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Government provides four types of benefits and services that are relevant to this issue:


...

The cost of these governmental services is far larger than many people imagine. For example, in 2010, the average U.S. household received $31,584 in government benefits and services in these four categories.

The governmental system is highly redistributive. Well-educated households tend to be net tax contributors: The taxes they pay exceed the direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services they receive. For example, in 2010, in the whole U.S. population, households with college-educated heads, on average, received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes. The average college-educated household thus generated a fiscal surplus of $29,250 that government used to finance benefits for other households.

Other households are net tax consumers: The benefits they receive exceed the taxes they pay. These households generate a “fiscal deficit” that must be financed by taxes from other households or by government borrowing. For example, in 2010, in the U.S. population as a whole, households headed by persons without a high school degree, on average, received $46,582 in government benefits while paying only $11,469 in taxes. This generated an average fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of $35,113.

The high deficits of poorly educated households are important in the amnesty debate because the typical unlawful immigrant has only a 10th-grade education. Half of unlawful immigrant households are headed by an individual with less than a high school degree, and another 25 percent of household heads have only a high school degree.
...

Cost of Unlawful Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayers

 

[Londoner]

The wealthy captured government with the election of Ronald Reagan.

Big business now owns government.

Who do you think funds our elections?

Most congressman are promised lucrative lobbying careers after they leave office. Big government, at all levels including all regulatory agencies, has been fully captured by big money.

Study the amount of money that corporate lobbyists invest into Washington and you will understand who runs government, and who government is run for. The original poster's tired welfare queen story is complete bullshit.

Corporations invest trillions each year to ensure that the government protects their interests.

The special-interests that own the system want welfare to be cut for struggling American Families so as to make room for subsidies and tax cuts to the wealthy.

In order to create a climate where it is possible to move all government resources to corporations and the wealthy, Movement Conservatism exaggerates the size of the social safety net (which has been shrinking steadily since Reagan in order to make room for the benefits now enjoyed by the mostly corporate powers who own our government).

Study the 2003 Republican drug bill. It awarded Eli Lilly a monopoly, a virtual no bid contract to fleece American seniors. This is what government does: it works with big business to fuck the poor slobs who lack the resources to buy a lobbying firm.

The original poster does not understand corporate welfare.

Study the military investment into stabilizing the overseas supply chains of our mega corporations.

Research the the subsidies and tax breaks that go to corporations that keep most of their holdings offshore.

The 1980s consumer electronics boom was heavily dependent upon the technological advancements made under the Cold War Pentagon budget. Most of the satellite technology that fueled the cell phone and Internet boom was developed inside the COLD WAR Pentagon and NASA.

Whole Southern California cities are dependent upon what a Reagan advisor called military Keynesianism, i.e., jobs that stem from defense related industries.

Study the massive war manufacturing apparatus that was created during World War II. Specifically, study how government-lead war manufacturing was, after the war, converted to civilian manufacturing for American and global consumers. Which is to say: The government was partly responsible For the postwar manufacturing dominance That made a generation of capitalist wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and contributed to the creation of the greatest standard of living that the world has ever known.

The original poster has not been told by his news sources how much corporations and capitalists have benefited from government. Indeed, there is a reason why all big corporations flock to Washington to suck at the teat of Centralized Power and unlimited money.

I believe that the original poster is a good, well meaning person (even though I know that there are people like him who are paid to clog message boards with bullshit like this). Ultimately, I fear that his brain has been captured by a political movement which provides massive incentives to men like Glenn Beck who distracts under-educated white-people with talk about welfare queens and socialism, so they don't notice the real problem: our government has been sold to corporations who have shipped the bulk of middle-class jobs to freedom-hating dictator-led nations in Asia and the global South. They do this to get cheap labor. This is why their profits rise while the wages and hard-working Americans are frozen or nonexistent. The wealthy have cut the bulk of American workers out of the loop of economic growth. This is why the stock market explodes ever upward whilst Main Street dies. This is why George Bush and Barack Obama have had the infamous jobless recoveries. Welcome to the new economy. Tax breaks in this country get turned into jobs in other countries. The only money that flows into this country is when the government turns the housing market into securities and derivatives casino for the wealthy.

Glenn Beck has done a terrible job educating the original poster.

God help us.

 

[American_Jihad]

The wealthy captured government with the election of Ronald Reagan.

Big business now owns government.

Who do you think funds our elections?

Most congressman are promised lucrative lobbying careers after they leave office. Big government, at all levels including all regulatory agencies, has been fully captured by big money.

Study the amount of money that corporate lobbyists invest into Washington and you will understand who runs government, and who government is run for. The original poster's tired welfare queen story is complete bullshit.

Corporations invest trillions each year to ensure that the government protects their interests.

The special-interests that own the system want welfare to be cut for struggling American Families so as to make room for subsidies and tax cuts to the wealthy.

In order to create a climate where it is possible to move all government resources to corporations and the wealthy, Movement Conservatism exaggerates the size of the social safety net (which has been shrinking steadily since Reagan in order to make room for the benefits now enjoyed by the mostly corporate powers who own our government).

Study the 2003 Republican drug bill. It awarded Eli Lilly a monopoly, a virtual no bid contract to fleece American seniors. This is what government does: it works with big business to fuck the poor slobs who lack the resources to buy a lobbying firm.

The original poster does not understand corporate welfare.

Study the military investment into stabilizing the overseas supply chains of our mega corporations.

Research the the subsidies and tax breaks that go to corporations that keep most of their holdings offshore.

The 1980s consumer electronics boom was heavily dependent upon the technological advancements made under the Cold War Pentagon budget. Most of the satellite technology that fueled the cell phone and Internet boom was developed inside the COLD WAR Pentagon and NASA.

Whole Southern California cities are dependent upon what a Reagan advisor called military Keynesianism, i.e., jobs that stem from defense related industries.

Study the massive war manufacturing apparatus that was created during World War II. Specifically, study how government-lead war manufacturing was, after the war, converted to civilian manufacturing for American and global consumers. Which is to say: The government was partly responsible For the postwar manufacturing dominance That made a generation of capitalist wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and contributed to the creation of the greatest standard of living that the world has ever known.

The original poster has not been told by his news sources how much corporations and capitalists have benefited from government. Indeed, there is a reason why all big corporations flock to Washington to suck at the teat of Centralized Power and unlimited money.

I believe that the original poster is a good, well meaning person (even though I know that there are people like him who are paid to clog message boards with bullshit like this). Ultimately, I fear that his brain has been captured by a political movement which provides massive incentives to men like Glenn Beck who distracts under-educated white-people with talk about welfare queens and socialism, so they don't notice the real problem: our government has been sold to corporations who have shipped the bulk of middle-class jobs to freedom-hating dictator-led nations in Asia and the global South. They do this to get cheap labor. This is why their profits rise while the wages and hard-working Americans are frozen or nonexistent. The wealthy have cut the bulk of American workers out of the loop of economic growth. This is why the stock market explodes ever upward whilst Main Street dies. This is why George Bush and Barack Obama have had the infamous jobless recoveries. Welcome to the new economy. Tax breaks in this country get turned into jobs in other countries. The only money that flows into this country is when the government turns the housing market into securities and derivatives casino for the wealthy.

Glenn Beck has done a terrible job educating the original poster.

God help us.

I'll say one thing, you got a lot of wind...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyKlJbe1frc]One of the best Seinfeld lines EVER. - YouTube[/ame]

 

[American_Jihad]

@ least cut the grass...

Our Views: From cradle, past grave? ​

November 12, 2013

If the old socialist slogan was welfare from the cradle to the grave, Louisiana’s privatized Medicaid program is trying to be more comprehensive: health care for the dead.

The state Department of Health and Hospitals paid $1.85 million for Medicaid health insurance coverage for more than 1,700 dead people during a recent 16-month period, according to a legislative auditor’s report issued Monday.

The payments went to private firms administering the Bayou Health and Behavioral Health Partnership initiatives, to June 30, the end of the state’s fiscal year. “Approximately 53 percent of these payments were for participants who died before the programs began,” stated the report from the Office of the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.

The Auditor’s Office said the department failed to identify deceased Medicaid participants, but the department says it will be able to recoup the money.

...

With luck, this example of DHH largesse to victims of the Grim Reaper will not be repeated.

Our Views: From cradle, past grave? | Opinion | The Advocate ? Baton Rouge, LA