[A presidential candidate not even in the offing...the best democracy
money can buy?]
Washington: Theater of the Absurd
By Ralph Nader
June 19, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The festering corporate
government in Washington, DC, is a theater of the absurd. Some of the
acts of this tragedy follow:
1. Start with the often hapless Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS), the agency that administers Medicare. Medicare pays
$1,593 per injection of Lucentis for wet age-related macular
degeneration as well as $42 per dose for Avastin, a drug that has a
similar molecular structure, used by ophthalmologists.
Both drugs are made by Genentech. Lucentis is FDA approved for the
vision problem and the other, Avastin, is approved to treat cancer.
Doctors can also use Avastin for vision treatment. A study by three
officials of CMS and Dr. Philip Rosenfeld, a retina specialist at the
University of Miami, reported that for Medicare patients 60% of eye
injections were Avastin, while 40% used Lucentis. Note this: Medicare
paid $537 million for Lucentis in 2008 and only $20 million for
Avastin!
2. Saving about half a billion a year by using Avastin is small
potatoes to another CMS shortcoming. For fiscal year 2009, CMS paid
$65 billion in erroneous payments-to deceased doctors, fraudsters,
delinquent or imprisoned contractors and other suspended or debarred
firms.
Organized fraud of Medicare is becoming more systemic. So President
Obama wants CMS to use a new fraud-detection program. Professor
Malcolm Sparrow of Harvard University, the nation's leading expert on
health care billing fraud told them how to do this many years ago, but
they were not listening.
The President wants to reduce throughout the government "payments in
benefits, contracts, grants and loans to ineligible people or
organizations," according to the Washington Post. Better trillions of
dollars late over the decades, then never!
3. Five oil company executives, including from BP, admitted at a
Congressional hearing this week that they did not have contingency
plans worked out for catastrophic failures. What is, by comparison,
the worst case scenario for offshore windfarms or solar/thermal
conservation, or passive solar architecture? Energy Secretary Stephen
Chu still does not note such a criteria to differentiate between
energy supply priorities.
4. President Obama now, belatedly, recognizes that the notorious oil
industry patsy, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) in the
Department of Interior, was a washout non-regulator of offshore
drilling inherited from the Bush and Clinton Administrations. Well he
also better take a hard look at the Federal Railroad Administration
(FRA), the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC), which are variously pleased with being captured by
the very industries they are supposed to regulate. Too many agencies,
in essence, allow the companies to "self-regulate" - an oxymoron.
Each of these agencies may wake up some day to witness a catastrophic
hazardous materials disaster or meltdown that they should have
prevented with stronger standards, inspection and law enforcement.
Heed this caution, Mr. President!
5. Another $50 billion request by the White House just whisked through
Congress for the brutal, spreading, futile war in Afghanistan-the
historic graveyard of empires. Republicans loved to vote for this raid
on the taxpayers.
But this week, a united Republican cabal, joined by Senators Joseph
Lieberman (D-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE), blocked a $120 billion package
(the threat of filibuster again) to extend unemployment benefits,
preserve Medicare payments, extend tax credits for corporate research,
raise taxes on oil companies, other big companies and investment
partnerships. The bill also includes $24 billion to aid state
governments in preventing thousands of state layoffs, including
teachers.
The point here is not arbitrarily to decry Republican questioning of
this domestic bill. It is to show how an overall ignorant,
rubberstamping Congress is not heeding the lessons from Vietnam and
Iraq - the immense casualties, the destruction and poisoning of these
countries by detonations, and laying waste to the environment, and the
imperialist policies that also harmed our country in so many tangible
and intangible ways.
6. Dana Milbank, the Washington Post reporter-satirist, was at the
House of Representatives' hearing this week where Congressman Joe
Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, saying the White
House's demand that BP set aside $20 billion for its huge toxic
contamination to the Gulf coast and its people was "a shakedown." He
added, for good supplicant measure, that he doesn't "want to live in a
country" that treats a private corporation this way. He later
apologized for his apology, at the behest of Republican House leaders.
The Barton outburst illustrates why it should be easy for the
Democratic Party to landslide the Republicans in the 2010
Congressional elections. Probably the most craven version of the
Republican Party ever, this team takes huge slurries of corporate
money while blocking any safeguards for workers, consumers, small
taxpayers, and the environment. They even defeated investor rights for
shareholders, who own these companies, but whose bosses pay themselves
obscenely to control them.
The Democrats have their hand out to the same commercial interests.
But if they want to win, they'd better formulate the language of
standing with the people over big business by November. And, if the
Democrats don't want November to mark their curtain call, their
language of standing with the people needs to be followed by action.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most
recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save
Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.
"http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25776.htmhttp://snipurl.com/xlfs3
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