How Health Care Legislation is Enacted

I'm writing articles for Examiner.com (Newark). I posted Neutering CBO Estimates for Health Care yesterday. The article categorizes four different legislative political strategies used to advance health care legislation through Congress. Quoting the article:

Legislative Reality vs, Political Reality, an article authored by Peter Suderman, identifies specific tactical maneuvers described by one of four different political strategies. One of the strategies entails shifting an expensive part of a bill to a completely different piece of legislation. The CBO can still analyze the expense but its finding will note a much less well known bill that will be unlikely to attract major attention. A CBO analysis of the high profile health bill will then appear more favorable. Suderman noted that expenses related to Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors were shifted to a separate bill in the House. Spinning off large expenses to a separate, more obscure bill is the first of four strategies.

Back loading spending to the latter part of a defined period of time is another means of creating an impression that actual costs are not as alarming as they seem. That was also done with health care legislation. In a ten year period of time provided to the CBO for analysis 99 per cent of relevant spending would take place in the last six years. In such a scenario one would normally assess costs within a six year period to get an average indicator of annual expenses. By front loading four non-spending years at the outset the average figures are brought down considerably. Clever is an apt term for the second strategy- back load spending to bring down annual averages.

The third strategy is a simple act of omission. Do not include expenses not entailed by federal agencies in estimates. While it can be technically justified to not include expenses of all the individual states as well as private sector entities in a CBO report, Americans might assume the legitimacy of these costs and expect them to be factored into estimates. Equivocating on the meaning of costs may be politically astute even as it borders on outright deceit.

The fourth strategy is perhaps the most insidious of all. It involves requiring the CBO to factor into its analysis very dubious assumptions about future costs. Suderman cites an example of Medicare payment savings accrued as a consequence of payment rate reductions "guaranteed" by a Medicare advisory board able to recommend but not able to make its recommendations binding. Future political landscapes have ways of obscuring forgotten intents smuggled into a CBO analysis years earlier. Smuggling unrealistic assumptions about cost reductions and savings points to the fourth strategy. The Democratic congressional leadership has effectively used the strategies to advance their agenda. Obama's much touted transparency in government has taken a huge hit.

Practical News from Your Government

You may have reasons to utilize some online services of the Social Security Administration. If this looks likely then consider registering with Business Services Online. Among other things this service enables users to upload information related to W-2 and W-2c forms.

Climategate

Climategate is a scandal involving the hacking of email messages of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain. Scientists entrusted with temperature variation data, used to evaluate the global warming hypothesis, were caught exchanging messages suggesting data slanting to minimize indications of cooling patterns. Defenders argue that data indicating warming over preceding decades still shows recent global temperature increases but climategate remains significant for several reasons.

The most obvious implication is a strong ideological bent toward global warming political policies by individuals who are considered gatekeepers for the objective gathering of empirical data. That in turn discredits science- the very discipline used to evaluate global temperature variation hypotheses. Can the public trust researchers and their data or are researchers as susceptible to political pressures as non-scientists?

A more subtle but deeply troubling aspect of climategate relates to the publication of scientific papers through what is known as a peer review process. As a researcher named Mann, who disliked the fact that a science journal published a dissenting view, wrote:

Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.

Mann is considering ways to retaliate to as to intimidate the journal's editorial board. He does not like the theme of a dissenting paper. It's politics, not science. This should send a chilling message to those who value science as a metholoogy for producing objective data. But perhaps it was unrealistic in the first place to expect that scientists could separate their political passions from their gathering of related data. In any case the actions of Mann and others raise concern about the integrity of the peer review process. That castes doubt about the reliability of scientific data and the integrity of those generating it. It also clouds political positions grounded in data. That includes political policies based on warming assumptions.