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posted by janrinok on Friday September 06 2019, @09:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-your-tax-dollars-are-spent dept.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (FSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), continued his efforts to reform the big-spending status quo with the release of a Summer 2019 edition of The Waste Report.

Once again, Dr. Paul's Waste Report turns the spotlight on just some of the ways the federal government spends the American people's hard-earned money, with this edition including stories of building up Tunisia's political system and the Pakistani film industry, supporting "green growth" in Peru, teaching English and IT skills at madrassas, studying frog mating calls, making improper payments, and more.

https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/dr-rand-paul-releases-summer-2019-edition-%E2%80%98-waste-report%E2%80%99

The biggest seem to be:

Converted an abandoned mental hospital into DHS HQ (GSA and DHS) .......... $2,120,040,355.35
Paid out billions from Medicare in improper payments (CMS) ....................... $48,000,000,000

[Editor's Comment: The full 15-page report is found in a Scribd display on the given link.]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:42AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:42AM (#890812)

    It may take the independent exercise of political power by the working class to prevent our so-called healthcare system from being controlled by D/R team, not libertarian, think tanks (Romney, Hillary, Obamacare oh my). If the Libertarian Party were capable of achieving any kind of mass support, that could be one way forward. But it is not, because minarchist capitalism opposes the class interests of workers, moreso than the mainstream parties.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @05:18AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @05:18AM (#890848)

    The US healthcare system is nearly a total waste of money, I don't see why anyone even wants to partake of it. Look at cuba where they have nearly none of the access to "modern healthcare" but nearly equal lifespans. All that "healthcare" is just a waste of money.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:11AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:11AM (#890883)

      Look at cuba where they have nearly none of the access to "modern healthcare" but nearly equal lifespans.

      And you know why? Because they smoke cuban cigars, that's why. Smoke is good for preservation, it's a fact that has been know for millenia.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:15PM (#890974)

        Magical thinking at its finest.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 08 2019, @01:38PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday September 08 2019, @01:38PM (#891281) Homepage Journal

        Puts a protective coating of tar on their lungs. Like Teflon against air pollution.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @03:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @03:05PM (#890986)

      Well, if we're talking about scare quoted "healthcare," then yes, there are perverse incentives at work to move away from proven treatments towards treatments that generate more profit for the hospital administrators and "insurance" companies (what they are selling is not insurance--it is a buyer's club). Cuba is a good go-to example for those concerned about bang-for-the-buck. Surely a wealthy nation like the USA can improve on the model. Why Is Cuba’s Health Care System the Best Model for Poor Countries? [2012] [blackagendareport.com]

      Cuba has become a world-class medical powerhouse with very limited resources, while “the US squanders perhaps 10 to 20 times what is needed for a good, affordable medical system.” As a result, the Cuban infant mortality rate is “below that of the US and less than half that of US Blacks,” and Americans can hardly claim to have a health care system.

      The perverse incentives are harming care providers as administrators drive down wages and staffing levels in pursuit of private profit. The epidemic of nurse suicides and the US healthcare crisis [current] [wsws.org]:

      “I’m a victim of burnout and PTSD … I’ve been crying all morning coming from a pain so deeply pressed and locked inside me. I watched my last patient die three days ago and leave in his wake a broken family truly taken to the depths of misery and suffering” —“My Burnout Story,” allnurses.com [allnurses.com]

      The advent of concierge healthcare is an obscenity. Victors Care brings class-based medical care to University of Michigan hospital [2018] [wsws.org]:

      On January 29, more than 200 Michigan Medicine nurses, staff and faculty issued a protest letter against the plans to implement the model.

      The letter [micros~1 docx] [qualtrics.com] strongly opposed the implications of Victors Care. The signers correctly understood that this system of health care would provide preferential treatment for the wealthy and pull primary care physicians away from the general care population. They also warned it would likely increase the workloads for non-Victors Care physicians and nurses, and create a program that allows wealthy patrons to “jump the line” to see specialists, forcing those already in line to wait longer. They concluded by warning that the Victors Care model betrays the foundational principles of public health by effectively discriminating against low-income patients.