Issa Subpoenas HHS For Medicare Advantage Documents

Kaiser Health News has a roundup of Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Ca) overtaxed patience with hhs issuing a subpoena to them for docs related to their 'demonstration' programs with medicare advantage.

Rep. Issa Subpoenas HHS On Medicare Advantage program

OCT 23, 2012

Republicans have suggested that a demonstration project providing more funding to the program is helping to cover up the cuts from the health law. The administration provided 1,300 pages of documents to Issa last week.

Politico: Issa Subpoenas Documents On Medicare Demo
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa subpoenaed the Obama administration Monday for documents he believes will expose Medicare malfeasance by Department of Health and Human Services officials. The move, confirmed by an aide to the California Republican, makes good on a threat Issa issued last week, when he demanded reams of data from HHS by 5 p.m. on Thursday. Although the agency dumped 1,300 pages at his doorstep just before the deadline, he contended that the information was garbled and unresponsive to his request (Cheney, 10/22).

CQ HealthBeat: Issa Subpoenas Documents On Medicare Advantage Program
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a subpoena Monday for documents related to a Medicare Advantage demonstration project. ... Republicans have attacked the three-year demonstration, which would increase payments to private health care plans in Medicare, as a way to cover up cuts to the Medicare Advantage program that were included in the 2010 health care law. ... But on Monday, Elijah E. Cummings, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, accused Issa of playing politics.
"Since HHS committed to producing the documents and is already in the process of producing them, this subpoena seems to be just for show ahead of the presidential election," the Maryland Democrat said in an emailed statement (Attias, 10/22).

Fox News: Issa Issues Subpoena Over HHS Documents
Issa claims the bonus program is being used to mask the first round of Medicare Advantage cuts in connection with the health care overhaul -- in order to win favor with seniors. "It's an unbelievable abuse of power," he said Thursday. Issa said the program basically funds "what ObamaCare took away." The program in question is called a "demonstration" project. But Issa complains the project is far more sweeping than a run-of-the-mill test program, and conveniently lasts until 2014. "This is larger than every test they've ever done at HHS combined," Issa said (10/22).

Meanwhile, there is also concern among Republicans about Medicare ID theft.

The Hill: GOP Lawmakers Slam HHS Over Identity-Theft Risk In Medicare
Leaders on a top House committee are pushing the federal Health Department to change the way it identifies people on Medicare. To reduce the risk of identity theft, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must remove Social Security numbers from the Medicare card, the GOP lawmakers charged Monday. Reps. Wally Herger (R-Calif.) and Sam Johnson (R-Texas) of the House Ways and Means Committee have argued several times that health officials should overhaul the Medicare card. On Monday, they linked their cause to a new report finding flaws in the way HHS responds to the problem of Medicare identity theft (Viebeck, 10/22).

CQ HealthBeat: HHS Inspector General Raps CMS On Medicare ID Theft Protection
Federal Medicare officials reported 14 breaches of medical information in two years affecting nearly 14,000 beneficiaries, but they failed to notify those affected in a timely way and often did not give them much information about the violation, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services said in a new report. In response to worries about medical identity theft, the government has set up a database with the Medicare ID numbers of 284,000 beneficiaries and 5,000 providers that have been involved in medical identity theft in the past or are regarded as vulnerable. But Medicare contractors have problems using the database, and few remedies are available for those whose numbers have been compromised, the OIG report said (Norman, 10/22).

This is part of Kaiser Health News' Daily Report - a summary of health policy coverage from more than 300 news organizations. The full summary of the day's news can be found here and you can sign up for e-mail subscriptions to the Daily Report here. In addition, our staff of reporters and correspondents file original stories each day, which you can find on our home page.

Thanks to Kaiser, all reporters involved, and especially to Representative Issa.

Issa Threatens To Subpoena Sebelius Over Medicare Slush Fund

Human Events has;

Issa Threatens To Subpoena Sebelius Over Medicare Slush Fund

By: John Hayward  Oct 18, 2012

President Obama had a big political problem: Obamacare destroys the popular Medicare Advantage program, which offers private insurance plans to supplement Medicare.  Something like a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries use this program.  (It’s funny how free-market competition is both popular and effective when it’s actuallytried, isn’t it?)

Obamacare sucks over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage, something that would have been very noticeable through price increases and benefit reductions during open enrollment… which began in October, right before the election.

If you’re Barack Obama, you solve a problem like that by throwing huge amounts of other peoples’ money at it.  So it was that a little “demonstration project” to reward the most effective Medicare Advantage plans was suddenly inflated into a titanic $8.3 billion slush fund – bigger than the 85 previous demonstration projects combined – in order to delay the pain of Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election.  The standards for receiving payouts from this “incentive” program were lowered so much that even mediocre plans could receive a “reward.”  It wouldn’t do to have seniors opening envelopes that say their premiums have skyrocketed or some of their favorite benefits have been dropped, right before the election!

The House Oversight Committee began investigating this jumbo Slurpee of slush in May, and ran into a Health and Human Services stonewall so obvious that it’s comical.  A request for documents on May 23 was ignored by HHS.  It was repeated on August 1, and ignored again.  House Oversight fired off emails to a couple of HHS staffers, and didn’t get a response for weeks… at which point the HHS Deputy Director for Oversight and Investigation said, “I’m checking on the status and will get back to you,” but never got back to anybody.

By September 27, it was dog-ate-my-homework time.  HHS staff said they’d “been working hard to pull documents together that are responses to your boss’s request and we plan to get you what we can ASAP.”  A week later, House Oversight asked how it was going.  “Actually, we’re aiming for tomorrow,” chirped the HHS staff.  “The copying machines are working overtime.”  Tomorrow came, with no documents produced.  The HHS was so very, very sorry for the delay.  “Just checked,” they sobbed.  “Unfortunately, it looks like tomorrow they’ll get it to you.”

That was on October 4.  By October 9, House Oversight was still looking at an empty in-box, and blood pressures were rising.  “The day got away from me,” an HHS staffer apologized.  “It looks like we’ve made some progress but I should know more in a day or two.”  Maybe House Oversight should have offered to roll a cart full of copy-machine toner over to Health and Human Services.

“We’re still working on this and I do think the end of the week is doable,” said HHS the next day.  “Could we touch base tomorrow?”  No bases were touched, but on October 12, HHS said they had “fingers and toes crossed” for delivery the next day.  All of those appendages were uncrossed by October 15, when HHS simply stopped pretending it could meet any sort of deadline.  I would imagine sometime after November 6 might be “doable.”

House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) ran out of patience with these antics, and wrote a letterto HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in which he said “your staff has run out of excuses and the long delay in providing these documents is inexcusable.”  He was blunt about precisely what his Committee is investigating:

Your reluctance to provide the Committee with these documents suggests that the documents and communications do not justify the Administration’s assertion that there is no limit to what the Secretary of HHS can spend on demonstrations, the Administration’s decision to exempt this Demonstration from long-established budget neutrality rules, or the Administration’s decision to waive the requirement for an evaluation by a statistical expert for this Demonstration, among other unsupported assertions.

Since [Government Accountability Office] experts testified the Demonstration’s design makes it impossible for the project to “demonstrate anything,” we are concerned that the only plausible explanation for the Demonstration is that you decided to utilize a loophole in the Social Security Act to temporarily cover up ObamaCare’s large cuts to the 13 million seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage until after this year’s election.

Issa set a deadline of 5:00 PM Thursday for the production of the documents, or else it’s subpoena time.  I doubt that’s going to get him anywhere with the lawless Obama Administration, which didn’t exactly fall all over itself to comply with those Fast and Furious subpoenas.  And Kathleen Sebelius flaunts laws that inconvenience her, such as the Hatch Act, with impunity.  She only needs to run out a few more weeks until the election.  Then she’ll either be protected by the general “let’s stop obsessing over the past” spirit of transition to a new Administration after the holiday break, or… well, let’s just say Barack Obama’s not going to develop a sudden new respect for the law, once he knows he’ll never have to answer to voters again.

Thank You Human Events, Mr. Hayward, and Representative Issa.

November: America has Had ENOUGH!

Context people, Context.
Reuters has;
US Democrat Campaign Chair Tells Candidates To Avoid Convention

"If they want to win an election, they need to be in their districts," New York congressman Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Reuters Washington Summit on Tuesday."

There is No way to paint lip gloss onto this one. Despite the Supreme Court upholding ObamaCare, or more likely Because of its Massive Unpopularity, The President's own Party is treating him like a plague boil. Go home and campaign in your own Districts translates in plain English as; " If you are Photographed with the President, you are going to get shellacked at the polls."

Weasel Zippers has denials from Democrat Leaders who've got their own Congressional Seats securely superglued to their sinecures. 
Schumer Says GOP Will Lose Election If They Push Ahead With Repeal Of ObamaCare Because Americans Love The Law.

Captain Clueless.

(Politico) — Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says that if Republicans push a repeal of the health care bill, they’ll face consequences in the fall elections.

Voters, he argued, just don’t want it.

“If Republicans make repeal the issue, they’re going to lose the election for the House, the Senate and, certainly, the presidency,” Schumer said.

Pelosi Pleads With Fellow Dems To Support ObamaCare

Met with the sound of crickets chirping.

(Politico) — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is urging fellow Democrats to make a stronger drive to convince Americans of the benefits of the health care reform law, even as the White House seems to be headed in the other direction.

“Seniors are already paying less for prescription drugs. They may not know it, but it’s because of the Affordable Care Act, and we have to make sure they do,” the California congresswoman said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Pelosi refrained from direct criticism of the White House or President Barack Obama for failing to sell the legislation, but when asked by host David Gregory about whether Obama had done enough, she replied: “I think he did very well the day it got the approval [from the Supreme Court], but, yes, it’s always a conversation with the public.”

Asked if she could have done more to boost public approval of the new health care law, Pelosi gave what sounded like a sarcastic yes.

“We certainly could have done that. … I could have left the battlefield of passing the bill and gone out and raised $100 million” for ads to build support for the legislation, she said.

If you think you've seen widespread opposition to ObamaCare already, wait another few weeks until the import of the Supreme Court's Upholding of it becomes more widely disseminated and discussed. Governor Romney has already promised to repeal ObamaCare on his first day. That's not going to happen because it will take Republican super majorities in Both Houses time, perhaps months to put the legislation together before he can sign it.


Toss this Latest "Don't Attend The Convention" bombshell on top of Obama's AG being cited for Contempt of Congress:

Reuters has;
Republicans To Press Fast and Furious Suit

WASHINGTON | Sun Jul 1, 2012 1:11pm EDT (Reuters) - The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives plans to file a civil suit in federal court in the next several weeks over the Obama administration's refusal to give Congress documents about a failed gun-running probe, House Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday.

The Daily Caller has;
Issa, Grassley Release Details About Fast And Furious Whistleblower Retaliation, Cover Up

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley are asking the Department of Justice’s internal investigator to hold accountable anyone who retaliated against or threatened to retaliate against Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers.

In a Friday letter to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress.

“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before. ..... "

The Democrat Party Campaign Chairman has just signaled that they've decided President Obama's re-election is not do-able, and they're in a cold sweat over losing 60 or more seats in the Senate and House on top of it, because of ObamaCare. Obama's second term is, in the view of his own machine:     

If you still find Pelosi incomprehensible, well, you just don't know Nancy and the Politics of Her Party in Her home State.

IF you don't already know who Governor Scott Walker is, the next vid will be more entertaining once you Do know, and the NYT will tell you.
Wisconsin Votes On Recall Of Governor



Is That vid a Cheap Shot? Are you new here? See how they do it 'Downtown' in Nancy's Congressional District, 

'Mental Health' In San Francisco: Link Fest

as Her Party and Her President's DOJ Chief finds himself in Contempt of Congress, facing a possible Civil Suit, and now there's allegations of someone at ATF threatening retaliation against whistleblowers. 

And here's one more for your scrapbooks from an Administration that swept in promising 'Transparency'.