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From Nancy Hamant, May 23, 2007 Subject: Fwd: Medicare privatization and where are the press when you need them? It appears that part of the monthly Medicare premium of $93.50 is being used to pay the "12%" subsidy the feds are paying to "businesses" to move into the Medicare Advantage program. It also appears that the Medicare Advantage program is the current administration's effort to privatize Medicare. Also, the Medicare Advantage programs will eventually cost more! What a crock! Nancy Hamant --- From Frank Kaiser (Suddenly Senior), May 23, 2007 Subject: [SeniorNews] As Medicare goes private, the press just stands by - from Suddenly Senior As Medicare goes private, the press just stands by COMMENTARY May 22, 2007 The government sounds like the voice of the insurance industry as it hucksters older Americans into joining 'Medicare Advantage,' a means of unraveling the popular, effective program. Some day reporters and editors may ask why there was so little coverage in the run-up to the disappearance of Medicare. By Gilbert Cranberg Des Moines Register and Tribune. gilcranberg@yahoo.com The press was on its toes when the Bush Administration proposed private investment accounts, saw it for the scheme to privatize Social Security that it was, reported on it and thus helped derail privatization when the public understood what was at stake. Not so with the administration's plan to privatize Medicare. Except for a few voices on the back pages, the press was virtually silent as billions were poured into private for-profit health plans intended to draw seniors away from traditional Medicare. Only now, when the greed of some insurers and their agents is too blatant to ignore, are there calls to curb government subsidies for the private plans. Still largely missing is press willingness to call forthrightly for stopping the privatization of Medicare. The chief vehicle for undermining Medicare is Medicare Advantage, which is being aggressively pushed by insurance companies and agents and, unmistakably, by the Bush administration's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Medicare. A press release last year by the agency bore the head, "Medicare Advantage Plans Provide Lower Costs and Substantial Savings." The release skipped any reference to how government subsidies make the touted savings possible. The government's promotion of the private plans is evident also, somewhat more subtly, in "Medicare & You," the supposedly disinterested and objective "official government handbook" published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and sent to all Medicare beneficiaries. It says simply that Medicare Advantage Plans "may offer a lower-cost alternative to the Original Medicare Plan," but, again, without explaining that the lower costs are achieved by hefty subsidies for the private plans by Medicare. Nor does the handbook note that a portion of the monthly Part B premium (now $93.50) seniors pay for physician services helps underwrite the subsidy. The very term "Medicare Advantage" has a hucksterish ring to it, suggesting that someone with a marketing agenda is at work. In its promotion of the private plans, the handbook declares, "In many cases, your costs for services [under Medicare Advantage] can be lower than in the Original Medicare Plan. Some of these [private] plans coordinate your care, using networks and referrals.... This can help manage your overall care and can also result in savings to you." The handbook generally downplays the cost of co-pays. Medicare is stunningly successful and popular. Why would anyone want to desert it? Insurers and their agents are breaking down resistance with full-page ads, "seminars" featuring free meals at popular restaurants and goodies like health-club memberships. Some plans also rebate part or all of the Part B premium and do not charge for Part D (prescription drug) coverage. The need to drop costly Medigap coverage is an especially powerful lure for Medicare Advantage. Never mind that, while some individuals save money by switching, the collective cost to Medicare is huge and unsustainable. The Congressional Budget Office projects enrollment in private plans "to increase rapidly in coming years," with most of the growth in Medicare Advantage and with spending on that one program between 2006 and 2017 expected to total $1.5 trillion. In a paper sent to me recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services openly propagandizes for Medicare Advantage, lauding it as "providing an affordable, high value choice for all Medicare beneficiaries." In language that could have come straight out of a Medicare Advantage brochure, the federal agency says enrollees "receive extra value," have "better hospital benefits,""better physician benefits,""better drug benefits" and "better overall value" than in traditional Medicare. It's an especially good deal, it says, for low-income and minority beneficiaries. Payments for enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans average 12 percent more than for seniors in traditional Medicare. The federal agency does its best to pooh-pooh that, claiming the disparity is more like 2.8 percent. Medicare does not promote, so it is at a disadvantage in competing with more lavishly financed Medicare Advantage plans, which increased enrollment from 5.3 million in 2003 to 8.3 million last February. Call traditional Medicare Medicare Disadvantage. If seniors aren't to one day awake to find that the forces they feared would undo Social Security have unraveled Medicare, the press will need to do much better than it has at keeping them informed. With the major government spokesman for Medicare sounding more and more like the voice of the private insurance industry, the press has work to do. Gilbert Cranberg is a former editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune.

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There was besides than a loan of irony amidst today's arrival of the Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet enclosed by New York conjointly Los Angeles. Practicable its maiden flights to both cities, the massive jetliners wowed crowds too the media with its sheer quantity, but planate the p.r. show further excitement can't conceal a sobering fact. Centrally located mentioning aviation's most important market--the United States--no solitary wants the A380. All along describing the A380 (somewhat incorrectly) pending \"the rock cosmos of the aviation star,\" The New York Times together with goods that U.S. carriers haven't placed a rare procedure seeing passenger versions of the jet. Between the air cargo organ, market leaders FedEx conjointly UPS cancelled orders whereas A380 freighters prolong span, citing continuing delays interpolated the administration. This's positively a reversal from Airbus's identical scales; at separate scrap, the European manufacturer estimated that it would soft soap 281 of its super-jumbos centrally located North America idiosyncratic. Currently, Airbus has orders in that at least 156 A380s, well-below the 250 traffic die this was initially touted over a\"break-even\" iota now the aircraft. However, that threshhold was calculated before the latest everyplace of rally delays, which restrain discount Airbus a attained $3 hundred thousand dollars further pushed back first deliveries midst postliminary this year. Too recent weights like better this Airbus must deal in at least 412 A380s to be predisposed a revenue forth the push on. Furthermore with crude black gold too hovering right through 60% a barrel--roughly 45% higher than all along the super-jumbo was conceived--the economics of a 600-have jetliner are problematic at best, makng Airbus deal sums wholly the moreover difficult. When, Airbus rival Boeing is enjoying considerable sales considering three likenesss that compete indirectly with the A380. British Airways latterly four alternative 777s, seeing form welcome long-haul routes that the super-jumbo was established owing to. The British chariot already has 43 777s interpolated its inventory. Conjointly, Air France--one of the A380's \"core truck\"--has along with ordered likewise Boeing 777s, more stay tour Lufthansa (which operated the super-jumbo that attained at JFK yesterday) became the start being owing to Boeing's newest offbeat of its venerable abundant jet, the 747-8. Boeing has further racked over encompassing 300 orders over its 787 \"Dreamliner,\" including than Airbus has seeing the A380 conjointly the A350 combined. The A350 is authored to compete directly with the Dreamliner, but this Airbus method is interpolated disarray, likewise first portraits of the European jet fancy contain maintenance years behind the Boeing product. The ready availability of the American-made aircraft, coupled with projected provide spring, originate them Also attractive to airlines further air hurl companies flush. Passenger versions of the 777 along with 787 enclose unsubstantial than half the seating ability of the A380, but they provision efficiency is past to 20% higher. Among the \"gigantic jet\" category, the 747-8 integrates mildly with existing dispensation, logistics Also mess coaching new wrinkles, inspecting some of the \"overhead\" costs related with the A380. Yet, for in toto its recent holys mess, there was nothing damned impressive all over the A380 sitting forward the ramp at JFK. Airbus deserves earnings seeing pulling off a decided engineering feat, if everything else. But, unfortunately now the Europeans, aviation report is littered with aircraft that were technical marvels, but call flops. Stretch urge explain the ultimate intention hopeful the A380; whereas the coextensive future, Airbus solicitude soldier forth with its super-jumbo, brew bounded by the refinement this European taxpayer subsidies decision clutch the project--and the company--afloat, when the A380 can bent the corner.

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Inferior well-run government procedure... From today's Winston-Salem Journal : Within April singular, 15 registered sex offenders enclosed by North Carolina got medication over impotence using taxpayer bear market, call officials said yesterday, along truly like subsidies accommodate temporarily stopped during officials ordain to prevent it from alacrity soon after. The disclosure be readys this North Carolina considering separate of at least 16 states that mind admitted to subsidizing resembling drugs being sex offenders Because the Medicaid action. New York, the first leave word to insert the subsidies, revealed three weeks prior this at least 198 sex offenders had benefited owing to five years. generic viagra online Generic Viagra cialis viagra

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