U.S. Politics: That's too bad for Carrots

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

57 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

The thing is though that all the "oh no welfare fraud" is 100% bs on my experience.  As a blue collar dude who talks/argues regularly with white non college educated men if you bother to point out that fraud is a drop in the bucket, especially compared to defense contractors price gouging or corporate welfare, it all comes back to them just not wanting black and brown people to get shit for free.  

It's all bullshit.

There are a number of great memes depicting this. My favorite is a white guy with a confederate flag being told he's getting $300. He then asks if every one else is getting the money too. The response is yes, he follows by asking "even the blacks?" and is told yes. He then refuses to take the money. 

[OnionAhaiReborn]

9 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

The average Dem voter doesn't react. Government reactions to fraud are reactionary (and often compulsory) rather than pro-active on a matter of principle. Check the pronoun.

Um, in both cases you referred to "Dems", and your pronoun was "they":

"And Dems walk right into it and give it a bullhorn when they don't react to waste, fraud and inefficiency in government."

"No, the responses are reactionary, not pro-active and it only raises questions as to how much they miss because they're just tax and spend Dems."

 

This is just bizarro goal post moving. You went from saying Dems don't react, and, even though you deny it now, I think it's obvious to everyone that you were saying Democrats in office don't react, to now saying that Democratic voters are obligated to perform outrage, and elected Democrats must develop precognitive capabilities and react to fraud before it happens. 

 

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

My point was clearly about the lack of outrage and the whateverism of the average voter.

It was?  Then why did you say that government is "too fundamentally broken and Dems won't/can't make it work well?"  Why did you say there's "no mass outrage and attempts at cleaning up the system to prevent future fraud, waste and inefficiency makes it worse" when there clearly are attempts to clean this up and prevent future fraud? 

If you really think "swing" voters are convinced to vote GOP because Dem voters don't show enough outrage at unemployment fraud then you're simply insanely naive.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

This is a state issue.

There's never any outrage. Just look at this thread. No comment on how that money could have gone to people really needing it and demands on the state of CA to make sure it doesn't happen again. Combined with Dems wanting more money, it looks extra bad. Yeah, shit happens. But when you know about it, you do something to prevent it from happening again.

Sorry, this is how it looks to a lot of folks and why they just tune out. Want to know why half of the country keeps voting Trump, this is part of it.

I just heard more details. No government employees were involved, it was the inmates itself. And it happened because California doesn’t cross-reference prison lists with unemployment claims.

I still don’t understand where you get “lack of outrage” from. So far everyone I’ve hear interviewed is pretty damn outraged.

[Lollygag]

1 minute ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Um, in both cases you referred to "Dems":

"And Dems walk right into it and give it a bullhorn when they don't react to waste, fraud and inefficiency in government."

"No, the responses are reactionary, not pro-active and it only raises questions as to how much they miss because they're just tax and spend Dems."

 

This is just bizarro goal post moving. You went from saying Dems don't react, and, even though you deny it now, I think it's obvious to everyone that you were saying Democrats in office don't react, to now saying that Democrat voters are obligated to perform outrage, and elected Democrats must develop precognitive capabilities and react to fraud before it happens. 

 

Then I was unclear.

Quote

Business/economy minded Republicans who are potentially swayable to some degree of openness to more government chew on stuff like this for *years* like a dog with a bone. Hard deal-breaker.

How it looks to them: This waste could have gone to someone who really needs it but Dems show no outrage over that, just accept waste and inefficiency, and ask for more money to go down the drain and more government which raises questions about whether they really care or whether their big government stuff is a big power grab from hard-working people who are honest and pay their taxes and Dem caring is just an excuse. Why should we approve more unemployment assistance if it just goes to criminals and is mismanaged?

Dems really have no idea how much this stuff undermines them. It's really, really bad and no mass outrage and attempts at cleaning up the system to prevent future fraud, waste and inefficiency makes it worse.

 

This is my point. There's no mass outrage for money not reaching those in need especially when it's so critical because fixing ineffectively administered programs isn't sexy enough I guess.

Keep being about fraud and calling people racists for noticing when asking for more money from what's likely to remain a Republican Senate*. Good luck with that, but I guess it's about it's about what feels better than actual results. Again, take away their fraud/inefficiency excuse by addressing it directly and leave them to flail with what's left.

[Lollygag]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

It was?  Then why did you say that government is "too fundamentally broken and Dems won't/can't make it work well?"  Why did you say there's "no mass outrage and attempts at cleaning up the system to prevent future fraud, waste and inefficiency makes it worse" when there clearly are attempts to clean this up and prevent future fraud? 

If you really think "swing" voters are convinced to vote GOP because Dem voters don't show enough outrage at unemployment fraud then you're simply insanely naive.

Yes, it was. You're conflating what I'm saying with how I'm reporting how Republicans perceive it. I'm talking about it comes across to them.

Outrage over ineffective programs which hurt those they're trying to help =/= states only making changes when caught being ineffective. I can't believe I have to explain this. Please never go into business if this doesn't make sense to you. If government can only work well when caught and being forced, that confirms their belief. If it works well of its own initiative, out of self-guided principle, that's the basis of any notion of government being good.

There's likely no single issue to score a win as voters' motives are complex. This is another case of you taking a statement someone makes and projecting an absurd conclusion from it. I'm not the only poster you do this to. As I said before, it's stupid strategically to leave cards on the table.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Outrage over ineffective programs which hurt those they're trying to help =/= states only making changes when caught being ineffective. I can't believe I have to explain this. Please never go into business if this doesn't make sense to you. If government can only work well when caught and being forced, that confirms their belief. If it works well of its own initiative, out of self-guided principle, that's the basis of any notion of government being good.

LOL.  First of all, this is all a bunch of anti-bureaucracy horseshit.  When people are caught defrauding private business is the knee-jerk reaction to blame those businesses and describe them as wholly "ineffective?"  Mistakes happen - especially when the system has to process a shit-ton more claims during a pandemic.  This is like the GOP rushing to declare the ACA a failure because of all the issues with the rollout of its website.  Were those problems?  Yes.  Were they fixed?  Yes.  Is the ACA now a very popular and efficient program?  Yes.  If you wanna see comparisons of efficiency - and preventing fraud - between government agencies and private firms, the bureaucracy is gonna kick the shit out of the private sector every time.

Second, you're now insisting in the first paragraph that you aren't criticizing government, but rather just how "Republicans perceive it" and then in literally the next paragraph (quoted above) you're directly criticizing the government for being ineffective and somehow only fixing it when "caught and being forced."  This is plainly talking out of both sides of your mouth.  Get back to me when you settle on a coherent argument.

[Lollygag]

22 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I just heard more details. No government employees were involved, it was the inmates itself. And it happened because California doesn’t cross-reference prison lists with unemployment claims.

I still don’t understand where you get “lack of outrage” from. So far everyone I’ve hear interviewed is pretty damn outraged.

As someone raised in business, I can't even express my feelings that this even happened in the first place. And this shouldn't be the only cross-reference.

Explaining it to someone and having them be outraged and then move on to some other thing isn't the same as it becoming a major state and nation-wide initiative to correct government waste in principle. I've wanting to see pounding of the podiums on this stuff from everyday Dems and state and national Dems since I've been old enough to pay attention but it doesn't happen and it's just more duct tape solutions. Even when people who really need it fall through the cracks.

Another example: A estimate from the government itself says about 30% of payment for Medicare and/or Medicaid in Florida are fraudulent.* We have trouble funding Medicare as it is so where are we if we can make major inroads on fraud of that scale on both reaching more people who need coverage now and moving closer to expanding coverage? But it's crickets. I don't get it. With all of the talk on M4A, it never comes up.

*Can't find the original source as it's some years old but look up Medicare fraud and my point is made.

 

[Lollygag]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

LOL.  First of all, this is all a bunch of anti-bureaucracy horseshit.  When people are caught defrauding private business is the knee-jerk reaction to blame those businesses and describe them as wholly "ineffective?"  Mistakes happen - especially when the system has to process a shit-ton more claims during a pandemic.  This is like the GOP rushing to declare the ACA a failure because of all the issues with the rollout of its website.  Were those problems?  Yes.  Were they fixed?  Yes.  Is the ACA now a very popular and efficient program?  Yes.  If you wanna see comparisons of efficiency - and preventing fraud - between government agencies and private firms, the bureaucracy is gonna kick the shit out of the private sector every time.

Second, you're now insisting in the first paragraph that you aren't criticizing government, but rather just how "Republicans perceive it" and then in literally the next paragraph (quoted above) you're directly criticizing the government for being ineffective and somehow only fixing it when "caught and being forced."  This is plainly talking out of both sides of your mouth.  Get back to me when you settle on a coherent argument.

More windmills.

I'll say my point one last time. If you're going to ask for money, be good stewards of it and not just when you get caught. Stop whatevering inefficiency and fraud. The loudness of the demand for more money should be just as loud as the voice for better management of it especially for issues as critical as people's housing, food and healthcare.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I'll say my point one last time. If you're going to ask for money, be good stewards of it and not just when you get caught. Stop whatevering inefficiency and fraud. The loudness of the demand for more money should be just as loud as the voice for better management of it especially for issues as critical as people's housing, food and healthcare.

And I'll say my point one last time.  No one is whatevering this fraud - all you have to do is take an honest look at the reporting of this story to know the California government is trying to counteract these efforts and has been since before this story broke.  But instead of acknowledging this objective reality, you're instantly regurgitating the classic GOP-engineered propaganda about "government being broken."  Mountains of research has not only demonstrated this is an insidious tactic to activate racial resentment - which you're buying into hook, like, and sinker - but also has shown that when compared to private firms, government agencies perform much much more efficiently and are empirically superior at preventing waste and fraud.

[Fragile Bird]

18 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

As someone raised in business, I can't even express my feelings that this even happened in the first place. And this shouldn't be the only cross-reference.

Explaining it to someone and having them be outraged and then move on to some other thing isn't the same as it becoming a major state and nation-wide initiative to correct government waste in principle. I've wanting to see pounding of the podiums on this stuff from everyday Dems and state and national Dems since I've been old enough to pay attention but it doesn't happen and it's just more duct tape solutions. Even when people who really need it fall through the cracks.

Another example: A estimate from the government itself says about 30% of payment for Medicare and/or Medicaid in Florida are fraudulent.* We have trouble funding Medicare as it is so where are we if we can make major inroads on fraud of that scale on both reaching more people who need coverage now and moving closer to expanding coverage? But it's crickets. I don't get it. With all of the talk on M4A, it never comes up.

*Can't find the original source as it's some years old but look up Medicare fraud and my point is made.

 

I think the number in Florida is so high because of one individual who created a company to process fraudulent claims. Biggest Medicaid/Medicare fraud in all of the US.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

And I'll say my point one last time.  No one is whatevering this fraud - all you have to do is take an honest look at the reporting of this story to know the California government is trying to counteract these efforts and has been since before this story broke.  But instead of acknowledging this objective reality, you're instantly regurgitating the classic GOP-engineered propaganda about "government being broken."  Mountains of research has not only demonstrated this is an insidious tactic to activate racial resentment - which you're buying into hook, like, and sinker - but also has shown that when compared to private firms, government agencies perform much much more efficiently and are empirically superior at preventing waste and fraud.

It's also worth pointing out, even if it's only somewhat on topic, that Republicans like to campaign on the government being broken and then immediate break it for their own ends once they gain power. If we're talking about basic functional operations, be it government or business, it's probably a bad idea to put people in charge of something they think is broken and bad to begin with....

[Lollygag]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

And I'll say my point one last time.  No one is whatevering this fraud - all you have to do is take an honest look at the reporting of this story to know the California government is trying to counteract these efforts and has been since before this story broke.  But instead of acknowledging this objective reality, you're instantly regurgitating the classic GOP-engineered propaganda about "government being broken."  Mountains of research has not only demonstrated this is an insidious tactic to activate racial resentment - which you're buying into hook, like, and sinker - but also has shown that when compared to private firms, government agencies perform much much more efficiently and are empirically superior at preventing waste and fraud.

This should not have happened in the first place. This was simple cross-referencing

 

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I think the number in Florida is so high because of one individual who created a company to process fraudulent claims. Biggest Medicaid/Medicare fraud in all of the US.

I don't really need to explain that for all of the talk of M4A and lack of quality health coverage in general in 2020, this remained in the weeds.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/apr/19/tim-ryan/50-billion-medicare-waste-yes-s-how-much-improper-/

Quote

$50 billion in Medicare waste? Yes, that's how much in 'improper payments' are made per year

 

At a town hall in New Hampshire, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, one of the many Democrats running for president in 2020, was asked how he would stop the federal government from wasting taxpayer money.

"This has got to be a major initiative for Democrats; we don’t talk enough about waste in the government," Ryan replied. "If you look at the Medicare program, for example, there is $50 billion a year wasted in the Medicare program. That’s a billion dollars a week."

...

Our ruling

Ryan said: "There is $50 billion a year wasted in the Medicare program."

The statement is correct in that in the past two years, the federal agency that administers Medicare reports that $52 billion and then $48.5 billion in "improper payments" were made  — ranging from payments made with bookkeeping errors to fraud. Ryan goes a bit too far in that some of those payments are underpayments and some were for payments in which there wasn’t sufficient documentation to determine whether the payment was improper.

On balance, we rate his statement Mostly True.

 

[Starkess]

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

More windmills.

I'll say my point one last time. If you're going to ask for money, be good stewards of it and not just when you get caught. Stop whatevering inefficiency and fraud. The loudness of the demand for more money should be just as loud as the voice for better management of it especially for issues as critical as people's housing, food and healthcare.

I don't disagree with your point in theory. The government is a huge entity with an enormous budget, and it is difficult and important to track and steward that money well. (Look at the Pentagon only being audited for the first time in 2018!)

Buuut it's a LOT easier said than done. I worked at a defense contracting firm and, at least from my narrow slice of experience, half of the wasted money it seemed was spent on trying to prove that we weren't wasting money. Well-intentioned reforms often just lead to ever-increasing amounts of bureaucracy--and the government has more important things to do, so they hire consultants who can navigate the bureaucracy and the whole bloated military-industrial complex just gets bigger.

Also the government is NOT a business and should not try to be run like one.

And lastly, it's not a simple matter of "x% of money goes to fraudulent claims so if we avoided those, we'd have that much more money for people truly in need!" The fact is that, whatever you do to reduce the number of fraudulent claims is also going to be a deterrent to those with non-fraudulent cases. To reach a larger portion of those in need, you probably need to accept an increased amount of fraud as a cost of doing business. Determining what and where that tradeoff should be is not simple, and there's a large amount of ideology in differing perspectives on it (ie there is not one objective "right" answer). If you can reach 90% of those in need, but 30% of your total spending is going to fraud, is that better or worse than reaching 80% of those in need with only 20% of total spending going to fraud? These are totally made up numbers for illustration.

[Martell Spy]

We Asked Prosecutors if Health Insurance Companies Care About Fraud. They Laughed at Us.
To protect their networks and bottom lines, health insurers don’t aggressively pursue widespread fraud, making it easy for scammers. Then they pass the costs off to you.

https://www.propublica.org/article/we-asked-prosecutors-if-health-insurance-companies-care-about-fraud-they-laughed-at-us

Quote

 

Like much of what happens behind the scenes in the health insurance industry, the insurers’ tepid response to fraud typically goes unexamined. But this year, I dove into the crazy tale of a Texas personal trainer who didn’t have a medical license but was easily able to claim he was a doctor and bill some of the nation’s most prominent health insurers for four years — walking away with $4 million. David Williams, who was also a convicted felon, discovered stunning weaknesses in the system: that when he applied for a National Provider Identifier, the number required to bill health insurance plans, no one would verify whether he was a doctor; and that when he billed insurers as an out-of-network “doctor,” they wouldn’t check either and would keep paying him even long after they learned of his fraud. He was later convicted of health care fraud and is now in federal prison.

Williams’ scam raised the eyebrows of even my most jaded health care sources. It prompted a half-dozen Democratic senators to write to the federal agency that administers the NPIs and ask what it was doing to plug the “loopholes.”

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

If you have a proper public health care system then you largely eliminate fraud, at least the kind of fraud that can be laid at the feet of the proverbial "welfare queen". That still leaves employee and business (contractors, suppliers) fraud, that happens in the private and public sector, but at least no one can go around accusing poor (non-white) people of stealing from the govt.

I don't really know any detail of how Medicare works, I assume some of that $50 billion is because there has to be some kind of assessment made about whether someone qualifies for Medicare coverage of their health care costs or not. But if you have MfA there is no such assessment, because everyone qualifies, and thus no such possibility for fraud exists. So, Medicare is defraudable in a way that MfA is not.

 

[Mudguard]

17 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If you have a proper public health care system then you largely eliminate fraud, at least the kind of fraud that can be laid at the feet of the proverbial "welfare queen". That still leaves employee and business (contractors, suppliers) fraud, that happens in the private and public sector, but at least no one can go around accusing poor (non-white) people of stealing from the govt.

I don't really know any detail of how Medicare works, I assume some of that $50 billion is because there has to be some kind of assessment made about whether someone qualifies for Medicare coverage of their health care costs or not. But if you have MfA there is no such assessment, because everyone qualifies, and thus no such possibility for fraud exists. So, Medicare is defraudable in a way that MfA is not.

 

A lot of the fraud is billing for services that were never rendered.  Medicare for all would still be suspectible to this, at least in the US system.  A doctor in a medicare for all system could still bill the government for made up services, such as tests that were never performed or for unnecessary tests that were needlessly performed.  There's billions of this type of fraud in the US each year.

[ants]

5 hours ago, Lollygag said:

This is a state issue.

There's never any outrage. Just look at this thread. No comment on how that money could have gone to people really needing it and demands on the state of CA to make sure it doesn't happen again. Combined with Dems wanting more money, it looks extra bad. Yeah, shit happens. But when you know about it, you do something to prevent it from happening again.

Sorry, this is how it looks to a lot of folks and why they just tune out. Want to know why half of the country keeps voting Trump, this is part of it.

That's probably because the outrage is taken for granted.  It was corruption, it will hopefully lead to (more) prison time, and the hole should be fixed.  Its bad, but that's a given.  

3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

More windmills.

I'll say my point one last time. If you're going to ask for money, be good stewards of it and not just when you get caught. Stop whatevering inefficiency and fraud. The loudness of the demand for more money should be just as loud as the voice for better management of it especially for issues as critical as people's housing, food and healthcare.

Except of course there is plenty of evidence that the money Republicans spend on checking these systems is incredibly inefficient.  Nobody is whatevering inefficiency and fraud, the Dems put far more weight on efficiency than Repubs.

That Republican voters just ignore this/believe a fallacy isn't then something to bash dems about. 

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, Starkess said:

I don't disagree with your point in theory. The government is a huge entity with an enormous budget, and it is difficult and important to track and steward that money well. (Look at the Pentagon only being audited for the first time in 2018!)

Buuut it's a LOT easier said than done. I worked at a defense contracting firm and, at least from my narrow slice of experience, half of the wasted money it seemed was spent on trying to prove that we weren't wasting money. Well-intentioned reforms often just lead to ever-increasing amounts of bureaucracy--and the government has more important things to do, so they hire consultants who can navigate the bureaucracy and the whole bloated military-industrial complex just gets bigger.

Also the government is NOT a business and should not try to be run like one.

And lastly, it's not a simple matter of "x% of money goes to fraudulent claims so if we avoided those, we'd have that much more money for people truly in need!" The fact is that, whatever you do to reduce the number of fraudulent claims is also going to be a deterrent to those with non-fraudulent cases. To reach a larger portion of those in need, you probably need to accept an increased amount of fraud as a cost of doing business. Determining what and where that tradeoff should be is not simple, and there's a large amount of ideology in differing perspectives on it (ie there is not one objective "right" answer). If you can reach 90% of those in need, but 30% of your total spending is going to fraud, is that better or worse than reaching 80% of those in need with only 20% of total spending going to fraud? These are totally made up numbers for illustration.

 

I'm making my case with this in mind as I was also tortured by a similar experience at my publicly traded Fortune 500 job to comply with government requirements to verify money movements. And again at a large family business for different reasons. There's a trip point where micromanagement becomes more of a problem than the original problem and one does need to be aware of this. I agree that this is a reason why nothing large, public or private, will reach any pure form of efficiency but as anything like an excuse, it won't go far.

In abstract, there's something to be said for the bold. But when so many folks live paycheck to paycheck and a huge chunk is taken out by the government, that difference smarts.

-------------------

Adding - also know from personal experience that this is a thing in rl. Corruption is much easier to hide in complexity than simplicity. LF can get off by blaming bad book keeping. But if he had clearer books, not so much. They know this.

ASOS Tyrion VI

He went back to work after she left, trying to track some golden dragons through the labyrinth of Littlefinger's ledgers. Petyr Baelish had not believed in letting gold sit about and grow dusty, that was for certain, but the more Tyrion tried to make sense of his accounts the more his head hurt. It was all very well to talk of breeding dragons instead of locking them up in the treasury, but some of these ventures smelled worse than week-old fish. I wouldn't have been so quick to let Joffrey fling the Antler Men over the walls if I'd known how many of the bloody bastards had taken loans from the crown. He would have to send Bronn to find their heirs, but he feared that would prove as fruitful as trying to squeeze silver from a silverfish.

 

[Lollygag]

40 minutes ago, ants said:

That's probably because the outrage is taken for granted.  It was corruption, it will hopefully lead to (more) prison time, and the hole should be fixed.  Its bad, but that's a given.  

Except of course there is plenty of evidence that the money Republicans spend on checking these systems is incredibly inefficient.  Nobody is whatevering inefficiency and fraud, the Dems put far more weight on efficiency than Repubs.

That Republican voters just ignore this/believe a fallacy isn't then something to bash dems about. 

I don't know why, but I know how it's perceived. Tim Ryan's right, Dems need to put more emphasis on it if they want to get more traction moving forward.

Republicans don't like checking on the systems, they just want deregulation, deregulation, deregulation. Small businesses because it's know-nothing government putting in wtf regulation that makes it harder and insults them by treating them like stupid crooks, and for large businesses, it's so they can get away with behaving like stupid crooks.