Rodent Regatta

A quote from Craig Cantoni: ”This is one of the most important articles I’ve ever written. If you agree, please distribute, publish and post as you see fit.”

WMDs Found In Medicare Legislation

by Craig J. Cantoni

The nation is facing two threats. The first comes from nations and terrorists that hate us and possess weapons of mass destruction. The second is from a different kind of weapon of mass destruction, a more insidious kind, the kind that is slowly but surely destroying us from within through mass entitlement spending, mass bureaucracy, mass taxation, and mass consumer and government debt.

Examples of the second type of WMD can be found in the 678-page Medicare reform bill being debated in Congress. The bill reads as if an enemy wrote it to strangle the nation in red tape and to bring us to our knees with the army of bureaucrats, lawyers and consultants that will be needed to interpret what the legislation says, including the second paragraph, which is quoted below:

”Except as otherwise specifically provided, whenever in division A of this Act or amendment is expressed in terms of an amendment to or repeal of a section or other provision, the reference shall be considered to be made to that section or other provision of the Social Security Act.”

Huh?

It’s downhill from there. Consider this gem on page 22:

”The coverage is designed, based upon an actuarially representative pattern of utilization, to provide for the payment, with respect to costs incurred that are equal to the initial coverage limit under subsection (b)(3) for the year, of an amount equal to at least the product of—
”(i) the amount by which the initial coverage limit described in subsection (b)(3) for the year exceeds the deductible described in subsection (b)(1) for the year; and

”(ii) 100 percent minus the coinsurance percentage specified in subsection (b)(2)(A)(i).”

I believe that the foregoing says that some faceless bureaucrat will determine reimbursement rates based on an ambiguous formula after subtracting deductibles and coinsurance.

Then there are the sections that allow the government to look into your knickers by having access to your medical information. The wording is couched in the terms of the privacy provisions of section 264© of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which is another bureaucratic monster that gorges on the public treasury. Because of the act, herds of American sheeple have been obediently signing euphemistically labeled ”privacy” forms in doctor offices without knowing what they are signing and without so much as a bleat of protest.

Naturally, the bill caters to politically influential special-interest groups. An example is on page 395:

”SEC 614. IMPROVED PAYMENT FOR CERTAIN MAMMOGRAPHY SERVICES.

”(a) Exclusion From OPD Fee Schedule.—Section 1833(t)(1)(B)(iv) (42 U.S.C. 13951(t)(B)(iv)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end of the following: ”and does not include screening mammography (as defined in section 1861 (jj)) and diagnostic mammography”.”

In other words, breast cancer is more important to the government than testicular cancer.

The bill violates every precept of sound insurance. For example, on page 159 it says: ”The issuer of a Medicare supplemental policy may not discriminate in the pricing of such policy, because of the health status, claims experience, receipt of health care, or medical condition…” Translation: Those who have lived healthy lives will be subsidizing those who have spent their lives smoking, drinking, eating fat-laden foods, engaging in risky sex and not exercising.

Of course, this is in keeping with the immorality of Medicare and other entitlements. Such programs are based on the notion that those who have lived beyond their means all of their lives and not saved for old age have a right to the money of those who have done the opposite. The notion is so widely accepted that no politician or mainstream journalist ever asks an elderly person the following question when he whines about not being able to afford medicine: ”What kind of cars did you buy during your life and how often did you buy them?”

The fact is, the average American can build a nest egg of about $300,000 over a lifetime simply by buying inexpensive compact cars, keeping them for 120,000 miles, and not buying them with borrowed money—versus buying more expensive cars every few years on credit. That’s more than enough to buy medicine in old age.

The nation has a priority problem, not a health care problem.

The Medicare reform bill also continues the government’s practice of wage and price controls. For example:

”The PDP sponsor of a prescription drug plan shall take into account, in establishing fees for pharmacists and others providing services under such plan, the resources used, and time required to, implement the medication therapy management program under this paragraph. Each such sponsor shall disclose to the Secretary upon request the amount of any such management or dispensing fees. The provisions of section 1927(b)(3)(D) apply to information disclosed under this subparagraph.”

Or this:

”The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission shall submit to the Secretary, not later than July 1, 2005, a report on adjustment of payment for ambulatory payment classifications for specified covered outpatient drugs to take into account overhead and related expenses, such as pharmacy services and handling costs.”

The foregoing language could have been lifted directly from a commissar’s manual in the former Soviet Union, where central planning resulted in mass starvation under Stalin and bare store shelves under his successors.

American apparatchiks will continue to make doctors indentured servants of the state and to have the state come between doctors and patients. Consider:

”Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission shall submit to Congress a report on the effect of refinements to the practice expense component of payments for physicians’ services, after the transition to a full resource-based payment system in 2002, under section 1848 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395w-4).”

I wonder how the American sheeple would feel if there were a Payment Advisory Commission in Washington that set the pay for their occupations.

Apparently, doctors in Alaska will be getting a break from the appartchiks:

”(G) FLOOR FOR PRACTICE EXPENSE, MALPRACTICE, AND WORK GEOGRAPHIC INDICES FOR SERVICES FURNISHED IN ALASKA.—For purposes of payment for services furnished in Alaska on or after January 1, 2004, and before January 1, 2006, after calculating the practice expense, malpractice, and work geographic indices in clauses (i), (ii), and (iii) of subparagraph (A) and in subparagraph (B), the Secretary shall increase any such index to 1.67 if such index would otherwise be less than 1.67.”

The bill allows certain payment adjustments and disallows others. For example:

”If the adjusted allowable risk corridor costs (as defined in paragraph (1)) of the plan for the year are at least equal to the first threshold lower limit of the risk corridor (specified in paragraph (3)(A)(i)), but not greater than the first threshold upper limit of the risk corridor (specified in paragraph (3)(A)(iii) for the plan for the year, then no payment adjustment shall be made under this subsection.”

Translation: Blah, blah, if you’re a health care provider, blah, blah, you better give large campaign contributions to politicians, blah, blah, if you want more money, blah, blah.

What are the administrative costs of the 678 pages of gobbledygook? For sure, the costs will be ten times more than government estimates, which never include the costs imposed on the private sector and on individuals. Nor do the estimates include the opportunity costs; that is, where the money could have been spent if it were not spent on red tape, including on plant and equipment to make the United States more productive and competitive in world markets. And for sure the estimates do not include the cost of tens of thousands of the best and brightest Americans shifting from productive work to the make-work of interpreting regulations, litigating the regulations, consulting on the regulations, and writing computer software to administer the regulations.

Anyway, the following is what page 623 of the bill says about the startup administrative costs of Medicare reform. Note that the section is referring to startup costs, not the ongoing costs or the cost of the expanded entitlements themselves.

”There are appropriated to carry out this Act (including the amendments made by this Act), to be transferred from the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund—
”(1) not to exceed $1,000,000,000 for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; and

”(2) not to exceed $500,000,000 for the Social Security Administration.”

When my poor grandparents immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century, taxes were about a third of today’s. If they needed medical care, they simply walked into a doctor’s office or drug store and paid the doctor or pharmacist with cash or a chicken. There were no intermediaries, and there were not 678 pages of new legislation on top of 120,000 pages of existing Medicare regulations. But there was a high savings rate, as there is in China today.

Medicare reform has sown more seeds of our eventual economic destruction.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT).

Wrong About Liberals

By Craig J. Cantoni

(For Internet publication)

I used to believe that contemporary liberals (really illiberals) were intellectually inconsistent. I was wrong. They are quite intellectually consistent, as a recent experience of mine showed.

The experience was sitting on a panel with a bigwig from the American Civil Liberties Union, an executive from the Consumer Federation of America, and the legislative director of a local of the Communications Workers of America—all contemporary liberals. I was the only classical liberal, if you will, or conservative in the image of the Founders. In today’s vernacular, that makes me a small ”L” libertarian.

The panel was put together to discuss and debate the FCC’s proposed rules that would permit more consolidation of media ownership and more cross-ownership between the broadcast and print media.

The contemporary liberal, er, illiberal, panel members were against the new rules, for their stated reason that the rules would result in a greater concentration of ownership and thus less diversity of political viewpoints.

The purpose of this article is not to demonstrate where their assumptions, facts and beliefs were wrong, but suffice it to say that history shows that there was less diversity of political viewpoints after the advent of modern-day FCC regulations than before. For example, under FCC regulations, the three ”monkey see, monkey do” networks of ABC, CBS and NBC had a virtual monopoly on television news for decades. That monopoly has been busted with cable television.

Anyway, back to the issue of intellectual inconsistency.

At first blush, the illiberal panel members seemed to be intellectually inconsistent in three areas:

One, they were concerned about fewer media conglomerates having greater control over political speech, but they were not concerned about a much more serious issue in a free society: the government having a monopoly over K-12 classroom thought.

Two, they were concerned about family newspapers being sold to such media giants as Gannett, but, being illiberals, they support the inheritance tax, which is the reason that many family newspapers cannot afford to pass the business to the next generation.

Three—and I’m not making this up—they discussed the idea that a possible solution to their imagined problem was for the government to get into the newspaper business or to use the tax code to punish TV stations that do not cover local news to the degree that they think is appropriate. In other words, because of their purported love of the First Amendment, the illiberals believe that the government should be in the business of regulating speech. This is the same convoluted line of thinking behind campaign finance and clean election reforms in which the government dictates how much money citizens can give candidates and when they can engage in organized political speech.

Intellectually inconsistent? Not at all. The foregoing is not intellectually inconsistent because of three underlying illiberal beliefs: Government is good, business is bad, and citizens are stupid and need to be guided by paternalistic illiberals.

It doesn’t matter to illiberals that the government engages in coercion and business does not, that governments throughout history have killed hundreds of millions of people and businesses have not, or that people cannot easily change government regulations but can easily change news sources in a free market.

Illiberals may be intellectually vacuous, but at least they are not intellectually inconsistent.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

Craig Cantoni says, ”Someone sent me a confidential transcript of a recent strategic planning meeting of the top brass at the Arizona Republic. Just kidding, but if such a transcript did exist, it would read as follows:”

Transcript of Arizona Republic Strategic Planning Meeting
By Craig J. Cantoni

(For Internet Publication)

CEO: I want to open our annual strategic planning meeting by reviewing some numbers. Our circulation dropped 3.7 percent for the six months ending in September, in spite of being in a high-growth state. As you know, we’re the highest circulation daily in the Gannett empire next to USA Today, which saw its circulation rise only .7 percent. During the same period, the Wall Street Journal saw its circulation increase 16.1 percent. Can anyone explain this and suggest what to do about it?

Managing Editor: The explanation is that newspaper readership among young people is dropping like a rock across the country. We’re doing three things about it:

First, we’re dumbing down the paper to try to attract young readers. Our front page is an example. One-third of it is now short news summaries, and two-thirds of it are snippets of lead stories that are continued on jump pages. It is designed to appeal to young readers with Attention Deficit Disorder, who like to get their news from the Internet and TV, and who haven’t acquired the wisdom and discernment that come with age. Sure, the tactic will disenfranchise older readers, well-educated readers and readers who like to read the paper over breakfast without turning the page every five seconds. But who cares about them? They’re not the nation’s future.

Second, we’ve continued our tactic of disenfranchising conservatives and attracting liberals, because young readers tend to be liberal. As the old saying goes: If someone isn’t a liberal when he’s young, he’s heartless; and if he isn’t a conservative when he’s older, he’s brainless. Mary’s human resources department has done a great job in hiring older liberal reporters who think like young people. Nice going, Mary.

Our recent series on Arizona’s taxes is an example of how we are appealing to liberals. It’s been the talk of talk-radio. Conservatives say that it only presented the liberal side of the tax issue. Of course it did. That’s why the series said that the state is being robbed of revenue because Arizona doesn’t impose the same level of taxes and fees as other states. If we wanted to appeal to conservatives, we would have quoted some of them about their silly belief that the government robs people instead of the other way around. Of course, we rarely quote a conservative man on the street about taxes, but we frequently quote state workers, public university professors, public school teachers and other recipients of government money. The young and brainless don’t see through this ploy.

Editorial Page Editor: And let’s not forget that the editorial board is doing its share of the heavy lifting. Following the lead of my predecessor, Keven Willey, the board continues to endorse higher government spending about 10-to-1 over spending cuts.

Chief Financial Officer: I know I’m new here, but why in heaven’s name would we purposely disenfranchise conservatives, many of whom own businesses and advertise in the Republic? For that matter, why would our advertisers want us to appeal to younger people who don’t have much money to spend instead of older and better educated people who have a lot of money to spend? It seems to me that we should produce a product that appeals to the widest audience possible. After all, aren’t we in business to make money? Besides, unless I’m mistaken, young people eventually grow older and wiser.

Managing Editor: You’re a great CFO, Jack, but you’re not a newspaper guy.

Marketing VP: I agree with Jack. We have the technical capability to produce different editions of the paper for different market segments and to charge wealthier subscribers a higher price for the content that they want.

Managing Editor: Whoa, Jim, you’re not a newspaper guy, either. You’ve never been a journalist. Virtually every reporter on staff believes that a newspaper has a higher calling.

Marketing VP: And what’s that?

Managing Editor: It’s to be a progressive force for diversity, justice, fairness, redistribution, mass transit, environmentalism, a planned economy and a world government.

CFO: I’m becoming ill.

Managing Editor: And I’m getting sick of your rabid capitalism, you right-wing extremist.

CEO: Now, now, boys. Can’t we all just get along?

Managing Editor: I’d be happy to get along, but only if these outsiders mind their own business and stop trying to interfere with editorial content. Even if we wanted to change the progressive mission of the newspaper, we’d have a rebellion in the newsroom. And even if we wanted to replace our news staff, it would be impossible to find enough reporters who understand economics and know the moral, philosophical and constitutional foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic. Heck, even our business columnist doesn’t understand such stuff.

CFO: Why couldn’t we hire reporters away from the Wall Street Journal?

Managing Editor (guffawing): And end up with another Julie Amparano?

CFO: Who’s that?

Managing Editor: Someone who was a similar national embarrassment to us as Jayson Blair was to the New York Times. We hired her from the Wall Street Journal because of her Spanish surname to pander to Hispanics. We later discovered that she was concocting sources and writing fiction to make readers believe that Hispanics have suffered as much discrimination as African Americans and have it worse than other immigrant groups.

Human Resources VP: Excuse me for interrupting, but we’re going to get in trouble someday for violating long-standing discrimination laws that prohibit basing hiring decisions on race and ethnicity.

Chief Counsel: Naw, Mary, we have nothing to worry about. The EEOC looks the other way if we do it under the guise of diversity.

Marketing VP: Speaking of diversity, our strategy of hiring Hispanic reporters to cover Hispanic issues isn’t working. Mexican-Americans comprise about one-fourth of Arizona’s population, but they read the Republic even less than young people.

CEO: That’s why we bought a Spanish newspaper.

Marketing VP: Which was a good decision. But I’m raising a market segment issue about the Arizona Republic, not about our Spanish newspaper: If in the name of diversity we hire Hispanic staffers to appeal to Hispanic readers, why in the name of diversity don’t we hire conservative staffers to appeal to conservative readers?

CEO: That’s easy to answer: Gannett measures how we’re doing in racial diversity but not in ideological diversity.

Editorial Page Editor: And let’s not forget that we have a token conservative in editorial board member and columnist Bob Robb. We also have guest columnist Craig Cantoni who writes for the community edition. He’s a strategic planning consultant and has a Texas newspaper as a client, a paper that has seen circulation and advertising grow during the recession. He wants the Republic to grow and prosper, but we ignore him because he’s not a newspaper guy. Between him and Robb, that makes two conservatives out of a staff of 200, which is about as much ideological diversity as Gannet will tolerate.

CEO: Excuse me, Jack, it looks like you’re reading something instead of paying attention.

CFO: I’m reading the Wall Street Journal.

CEO: Oooo, pass it to me when you’re done.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

The following is about vouchers and was published by the Arizona Republic on Nov. 12 as half of the weekly point-counterpoint between Craig Cantoni and his teacher opponent.

The antidote to group-think
By Craig J. Cantoni

In 1921, at the urging of the Ku Klux Klan, Oregon passed a law requiring compulsory attendance at public schools. Four years later, the Supreme Court overturned the law, saying: ”The fundamental theory of liberty on which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”

My mother was born that year to poor Italian immigrants, who could afford to send her to parochial school because taxes were much lower than the confiscatory levels of today. Now, 82 years later, the nation has de facto compulsory public school attendance, because most parents cannot afford to pay their taxes and to also send their kids to private school.

As a result, the government has a monopoly over classroom thought. Worse, the thought is delivered by one of the most powerful special-interest groups, teacher unions. The standardization of children has been achieved.

But the forces of conformity and group-think are not satisfied with only controlling K-12 education. The public school establishment and its allies in the media, including reporters and editors of this newspaper, are now advocating ”early childhood education,” which is a euphemism for the government beginning the standardization at an earlier age.

Fighting these formidable forces are homeschoolers, advocates of vouchers and education tax credits, and other defenders of liberty and educational freedom. They are maligned as extremists and weirdoes by the group-thinkers for not succumbing to group-think.

That alone is reason enough for me to support their efforts, but I also find them to be better informed than the forces of conformity. Refusing to swallow the politically correct mush put out by the government, by teachers unions and by the mass media, they are indeed a threat to the establishment.

It is telling that the establishment does not want the American sheeple to know the full history of public education in America, especially how educational freedom was replaced with coercion and hijacked by special interests. For that history, independent thinkers have to go to other sources, such as the Cato Institute (www.cato.org), which recently published an excellent paper on the subject, ”Our History of Educational Freedom.”

Warning: Reading such material can be hazardous to your reputation. If you depart from government authorized group-think, you’ll be called an extremist and weirdo.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

Elmer Fudd and the G-word

By Craig J. Cantoni

(For Internet publication)

Ronald Reagan was wrong when he said that the government is the problem. The problem is the word ”government,” not the government. If we stopped using the word and used the words ”every American” or ”people” instead, we would have more liberty and less gov …. Whew, I almost used the word.

As an example, politicians who want nationalized health care say that the government should give every American free health care. But since the government consists of every American, that’s as senseless as saying that every American should give every American free health care. It’s similar to saying that every American should give every American free food, shelter and clothing.

Imagine Ted Kennedy giving a speech on health care without using the G-word:

”My fellow Americans: Since the holiday season is approaching, I propose a national Christmas, er, holiday, gift exchange program in which each American will give his neighbor a gift certificate for health insurance for a year. That way, health insurance will be free to all Americans and health care costs will stop rising.”

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what Ted Kennedy is saying when he says that the government should provide free health insurance to all Americans. Of course, what he really means is that some Americans should pay the health insurance bills of other Americans and that politicians like him should decide who pays and who doesn’t.

Presidential candidate Howard Dean also believes that some Americans should pay the health insurance bills of other Americans, although he doesn’t say it that way. Instead, he says that the government should pick up the tab. But if he were an honest man and didn’t use the G-word, he would give a speech as follows to his beloved southerners in the hollows of South Carolina:

”Mah feller South Car’linans: Ah propose thet we give some South Car’linans free health insurance by stickin’ other South Car’linans wif th’ bill, ah reckon.
Thet means thet eff’n y’all got a beat-up pickup truck wif a Confederate flag in th’ rear window an’ sillowets of naked ladies on th’ mud flaps, yo’ kin spend yer money on a nu crew-cab pickup an’ take it t’ NASCAR races wifout wo’ryin’ about how yo’ll pay yer medical bills. I’ll jest send th’ bill t’ yer neighbo’ who wawks hard an’ saves his money, the jackass.”

Or imagine Dick Gephardt giving a speech on the budget deficit:

”My fellow Democratic spendthrifts: When people spend more than they make, people end up in debt. Therefore, to get the people out of debt, I propose that the people spend more. That way, the economy will grow and we’ll have full employment.”

Or as Gephardt’s cousin Elmer Fudd would say: ”Since we are shooting too many silly wabbits, I pwopose that we shoot more silly wabbits.”

Which is why politicans won’t stop using the G-word. It keeps the public from seeing that they have the economic sense of Elmer Fudd.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.