US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4845

On August 30 2016 00:33 Danglars wrote:
Wiener's at it again, just when the political news was getting boring (unless you include Kaepernick). The sideshow America needs.

More than three dozen just-released audits reveal how some private Medicare plans overcharged the government for the majority of elderly patients they treated, often by overstating the severity of certain medical conditions, such as diabetes and depression.

The Center for Public Integrity recently obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the federal audits of 37 Medicare Advantage programs. These audits have never before been made public, and though they reveal overpayments from 2007 — money that has since been paid back — many plans are still appealing the findings.

Medicare Advantage is a privately run alternative to standard Medicare; it has been growing in popularity and now enrolls more than 17 million seniors. In 2014, Medicare paid the health plans more than $160 billion.

But there's growing controversy over the accuracy of billings, which are based on a formula called a risk score; it is designed to pay Medicare Advantage plans higher rates for sicker patients and less for people in good health. In a series of articles published in 2014, the Center for Public Integrity reported that overspending tied to inflated risk scores has cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in recent years.

In May, a Government Accountability Office report called for "fundamental improvements" to curb excess charges linked to faulty risk scores. In addition, at least half a dozen health-industry insiders have filed whistleblower lawsuits that accuse Medicare Advantage insurers of manipulating risk scores to boost profits.

The audits from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that all but two of the 37 health plans audited for 2007 were overpaid — typically several hundred thousand dollars too much — for the sample of 201 patients examined at each plan.

Among the insurers charging the government too much: five Humana Inc. health plans, three UnitedHealth Care Group plans and four Wellpoint Inc. plans. CPI reporters approached the administrators of these plans for an interview, but all declined to comment.

On August 29 2016 22:16 ticklishmusic wrote:


I am the biased media, literally just repeating what Donald Trump says

On August 30 2016 00:35 zlefin wrote:
Anyone know if Wiener's ancestors come from Vienna (Wien)? I'm wondering if that's where his last name came from.

On August 30 2016 00:28 Plansix wrote:
Also in the news, in an effort to remove human bias from their news feed, Facebook put software in charge. Within a day or so, completely fake story was given the endorsement of Facebook’s trending topics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/29/a-fake-headline-about-megyn-kelly-was-trending-on-facebook/

I love watching the tech industry squirm under the weight their front in center role in news media. People who believed they were above bias and let “the information speak for itself”. Now they have to face the harsh truth that they might be presenting stories that would have been relegated to that weird dude holding a sign in the subway telling you the lizard people are taking over.

On August 30 2016 01:04 WolfintheSheep wrote:

The real harsh truth is that people in general, completely unrelated to tech, enjoy fake stories and make no effort in verifying them before spreading them around.

"Trending" means its popular at the moment. When Facebook made the decision to stop manually curating what appears, this was the expected outcome. The question is whether they actually care about having a news role or not.

Continuing efforts to reach out to black voters who have largely avoided supporting Donald Trump to this point, the Republican nominee's campaign announced that he will visit Detroit on Saturday to speak to the president and CEO of the only African-American owned and operated national Christian television network.

Trump will speak at Great Faith Ministries, a church in the heart of the city, where he will speak with Impact Network President and CEO and Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, the campaign said in a statement from surrogate Mark Burns, a pastor who set up a meeting between the candidate and Jackson.

"Mr. Trump will answer questions that are relevant to the African American community such as education (including HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities]), unemployment, making our streets safe and creating better opportunities for all," Burns said. "He will then give an address to outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country. Citizens around the country will see, as I've have seen, the heart and compassion Mr. Trump has for all Americans, which includes minority communities whose votes have been taken for granted for far too long."

Trump has attempted to appeal to African-American as well as Hispanics voters in recent weeks, accusing Hillary Clinton of being a "bigot" and asking voters "what the hell do you have to lose?"

Mylan to launch generic EpiPen at half the price of original

Mylan NV (MYL.O) said it would launch the first generic version of its allergy auto-injector EpiPen for $300, half the price of the branded product, the drugmaker's second step in less than a week to counter the backlash over the product's steep price.

The company reduced the out-of-pocket costs of EpiPen for some patients on Thursday, but kept the list price at about $600, a move that U.S. lawmakers and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said was not enough. EpiPen cost about $100 in 2008.

Mylan said on Monday it expected to launch the generic product "in several weeks," an unusual move considering the branded bestseller is still patent protected and major rival treatments have failed to get regulatory clearances.

Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal said Myl‎an may appear to be moving in the right direction, but its latest move raised as many questions as solutions, including why the price is still astronomically high and whether its action is a preemptive strike against a competing generic.

"Investigations are still vitally necessary into possible antitrust lawbreaking, and I will press for Senate hearings as well as FTC subpoenas," Blumenthal said in a statement.

[...]

"Our decision to launch a generic alternative to EpiPen is an extraordinary commercial response," Chief Executive Heather Bresch said Monday. "We determined that bypassing the brand system in this case and offering an additional alternative was the best option."

However, consumer watchdog group Public Citizen said Mylan's latest move was another "convoluted mechanism to avoid plain talk, admit to price gouging and just cut the price of EpiPen."

"The weirdness of a generic drug company offering a generic version of its own branded but off-patent product is a signal that something is wrong," President Robert Weissman said.

[...]

On August 30 2016 01:09 Nevuk wrote:
Huma is finally separating from anthony Weiner. Possibly sexting with his kid literally next to him in bed was a bit too much.

Donald Trump is eschewing traditional methods of preparation for the upcoming presidential debates, favoring lunch meetings at golf clubs over mock debates or briefing books, according to a Washington Post report out Saturday.

The Post reported that rather than reviewing policy positions or holding formal rehearsals, Trump prefers to hold Sunday lunch meetings over bacon cheeseburgers at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey with a group of confidants including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham and newly-minted campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.

“Donald Trump is the unpredictable X-factor and Hillary Clinton is the scripted statist," Conway explained to the newspaper.

Former Trump advisor Sam Nunberg agreed, telling the Post that the GOP candidate wants to be the "showstopper at the Roman Colosseum, the main event at WrestleMania" to Clinton's "professional and wonky" counterpoint.

“He’s an unconventional candidate, so debate prep in the classic sense doesn’t apply to him," Conway added. "That applies to the accoutrements that are usually associated with getting ready for debates: contrived gestures, lecterns, a group of consultants in belted khakis holed up in a cabin, the Socratic method of peppering questions. That’s not him.”

Brett O'Donnell, who served as debate coach to Mitt Romney in 2012, said that former top aide Paul Manafort had previously asked whether O'Donnell would prepare Trump for the debates.

Although those negotiations came to nothing, O'Donnell said that Trump should be worried. “He thinks he won all the primary debates,” O'Donnell told the Post, but when it comes to Clinton "he can’t just name-call her and have a wrestling match for 90 minutes.”

Unnamed sources told The Washington Post that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were also present at the meeting, as were newly-hired campaign CEO Steve Bannon and former Fox News boss Roger Ailes.

In a statement two weeks ago, the Trump campaign denied a report that Ailes was helping the candidate prepare for debates.

"He is not advising Mr. Trump or helping with debate prep. They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign," campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Hollywood Reporter.

On August 30 2016 01:09 Nevuk wrote:
Huma is finally separating from anthony Weiner. Possibly sexting with his kid literally next to him in bed was a bit too much.