The Angry Bear

I have been hitting the issues with FFS Medicare vs Medicare Advantage hard. Primarily, Medicare Advantage is draining Medicare funding due to the $billions being spent due to over-coding. Twelve $billion of over-coding charges in 2020. Another $15 billion of over-coding charges in 2021. CEOs are raking in higher salaries due to the preferential treatment the Medicare Advantage plans receive from Congress and CMS. Over-coding is just one of the...

Steve Hutkins and former N.C. Postmaster Mark Jamison have been following the issues with the USPS, its reorganization, and the attacks on it by politicians and commercial interests. This particular post is detailing parts of the reorganization of it. As you will read, the plan is to establish distribution centers where Mail Delivery Personnel would pickup the mail and go on their delivery routes. The plan was developed and put into play by USPS...

Weekly Indicators for March 27 – 31 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat I keep forgetting to put up this link on Saturdays, but you know where to find it: my Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The good thing about high frequency indicators is you can see what is happening with trends much more quickly than with monthly releases. The bad thing is that the drip-drip-drip can take forever! Anyway, the fallout from SVB...

Real income in February rises slightly; real spending declines slightly; real total sales in January rose sharply, as expected  – by New Deal democrat As I wrote earlier this week, personal income and outlays is one of the two most important data releases at the current time, along with the monthly jobs report. That’s because these are the two sectors of the economy that have most prominently not rolled over, and are keeping us out of...

Infidel753, Prosecuting Trump — a caveat, Infidel753 Blog. Just two weeks early . . . It’s starting to look as if Trump may be indicted fairly soon, an event much of the left has been impatient to see for some time (what I myself most wanted was to simply never hear another word about him, but it’s clear that the reality we live in is not going to grant that wish for the foreseeable future).  The case coming to a head is the Stormy Daniels...

It has taken years for the Feds, CMS, MedPac, Congress to catch up with the thieving practice of these healthcare plans. They have mislead the people they sell these plans too with come-ons such as health club ss, etc. Then when it comes time for care, it is delayed or denied. This comes after the plans already have received funding. It is about time Congress did something other than bicker. NYT could have been tougher . . . Medicare Delays...

Prejudices, bigotry, misogyny, sexism, discrimination, racism, and put-downs are all forms of bullying. Around since when, the put-down is an especially egregiously harmful form of bullying meant to diminish its target’s self-esteem. To bring them down; to keep them down. Long common to inter-city ghettos, it has of late (or maybe not so late) become a favorite of the Republican Party. Its members reflexively denigrate anyone holding viewpoints...

Dean is on a roll here with propositions for the nation as it ages. Thoughtfully, I called it initially a Quiver of Arrows in Support of the economy and in the end Social Security. He is answering a question of what do we need to do to prepare for an aging population and lower replacement rates. We may not need to do as much as we think. By the way this post is a follow up to Dale Coberly’s post; Social Security Trustees’ Report Is Out So Is...

Social Security Trustees’ Report Is Out So Is CRFB’s Analysis by Dale Coberly Look, I don’t like CRFB.  They claim to be the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), but in the years I have been watching them they have looked more like the Committee to Cut Social Security. Today my inbox presented me with a note from CRFB on this year’s Trustees Report.  As far as I can tell CRFB is telling the truth here, strictly speaking. ...

Lets get this out of the way first; Speaker 1 is Charlie Sykes of “The Bulwark Podcast“. Speaker 2 is former Federal Judge Michael Luttig. The talk and the partial transcript is about trump and the events leading up to January 6 starting 2 days before the attempt. As I read through the entire Transcript, I would call it “a “what do or did you know and when did you know it” interrogation. “The question to be asked is could the January 6th...