By US Daily Review Staff. Source: Center for Immigration Studies

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) provides the first published estimates of shortfalls to government trust funds for senior citizens resulting from the hiring of certain categories of foreign workers. In the Center’s recent study, How Employers Cheat America’s Aging by Hiring Foreign Workers, CIS fellow David North examines how American employers and over half a million alien workers avoid paying payroll taxes to the detriment of American retirees and disabled workers.

By hiring certain classes of aliens, American employers and their foreign workers can avoid paying taxes to the Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) trust funds. Employers save at least 8.45 percent of the total payroll, undermining the incentive to hire American citizens or legal residents. While employers are just playing by the rules outlined in legislation, it is clear that the legislation is written to benefit the non-citizen workers and their employers.

“We have in these programs a double whammy: a government program that subsidizes employers to hire alien workers, rather than resident ones, on one hand, and, on the other hand, the routine siphoning of moneys that should be going to the trust funds for the aging, moneys that instead wind up in the pockets of the foreign workers and their employers,” North comments.

“Although some may contend that foreign workers who won’t remain in the country long enough to benefit from these trust funds shouldn’t be required to contribute, there’s no rationale for the employer benefiting” said Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “These trust funds are losing over $1.5 billion a year as a direct result of these foreign-worker programs. This is obviously a small part of the shortfall faced by these programs, but there is no excuse for retaining these loopholes carved out by Congress and special interests.”

Mr. North’s research provides calculations on trust fund losses for each of the relevant foreign worker programs, including Summer Work Travel, foreign students working off campus, cultural workers, and foreign college graduates working on OPT permits. The latter category permits foreign workers to stay for as long as two years and five months after graduation.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization. Since its founding in 1985, the Center has pursued a single mission – providing immigration policymakers, the academic community, news media, and concerned citizens with reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States.

By US Daily Review Staff.

The non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) is questioning Medicare’s authority to hand out $8.3 billion in bonuses to Medicare health care plans just before the election while delaying much larger cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage plans directed under the president’s new health care law.

“The White House created this ‘bonus plan’ out of thin air to mask the massive cuts to seniors in their Medicare Advantage plans mandated under ObamaCare. The truth is that more than 90% of the cuts to Medicare will occur after the November election and the president is doing all he can to hide it,” said Texas Republican Kevin Brady, a senior member of the House Ways & Means Committee. “I’m glad this White House Medicare scam was exposed because I predict that due to ObamaCare many of our Texas seniors will eventually be forced out of their Medicare plans or will pay much higher prices to keep what they have.”

Brady confronted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the bonus program and the future Medicare Advantage cuts in a recent congressional hearing. In a letter GAO General Counsel Lynn Gibson expressed serious concerns with the legal authority of this temporary Medicare scheme and the scheme’s sheer size.

By the Heritage Foundation, Special to US Daily Review.

In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision, it is important to remember that the constitutionality of the individual mandate isn’t the only problem with the law. Here’s a list of Obamacare’s five most destructive impacts on America’s seniors.

1. Less choice. Obamacare puts 15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of meeting a budget target in Medicare with its newly created Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). IPAB may be statutorily prohibited from directly rationing care, but that doesn’t mean it can’t ration indirectly by reducing provider payments for certain medical procedures, which can compromise physician autonomy in the delivery of care.
2. Fewer options. Obamacare delivers a strong blow to Medicare Advantage (MA), which allows seniors to receive Medicare benefits from a private health plan of their choosing. Obamacare cuts the program by $145 billion, which, according to the Medicare Actuary, will decrease enrollment by 50 percent by 2017.
3. Higher taxes. In 2013, two new Obamacare taxes go into effect that will likely impact seniors: the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices and the 3.8 percent tax on unearned of investment income. Not only do seniors rely heavily on medical devices, but, as Heritage expert Bob Moffit points out, “older people have larger investments than younger people, and thus high income older persons will be more heavily impacted by the new 3.8 percent Medicare tax imposed on unearned or investment income (effective 2013).”
4. Fewer doctors. As Moffit explains, “With the retirement of 77 million baby boomers beginning in 2011, the Medicare program will have to absorb an unprecedented demand for medical services.” Obamacare exacerbates the issue for seniors by leaving the physician payment reduction schedule on the books and introducing more cuts to provider payments, which will make it even more difficult for Medicare doctors and other providers to serve the growing Medicare population.
5. Less access to care. Obamacare’s irresponsible cuts to provider payments will cause 15 percent of Medicare Part A providers to become unprofitable within the next 10 years, according to the Medicare Actuary. As Medicare providers begin to operate at a loss, they will be unable to stay afloat, leaving seniors with less access to care.

Obamacare will harm seniors. Watch Heritage’s video of one senior telling her story of Obamacare’s impact on her care, and check out Heritage’s plan to preserve Medicare. 

By US Daily Review Staff.

Today’s annual reports from the trustees for Social Security and Medicare showed no improvement in the programs’ fiscal health, according to Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX).

The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which pays for Medicare Part A, showed no improvement and is expected to exhaust its reserves in just twelve years – 2024 - the same as projected last year.

Social Security, which last year had to borrow $142 billion from investors in China and around the world to pay benefits to America’s elderly, will exhaust its reserves in 2035, a year earlier than projected in last year’s report.  Few imagined this year’s prognosis could be much worse than last years.  Now there is no question about it.

“Doing nothing ends Medicare and Social Security as we know it for my mom and for yours,” warns U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady, a senior member of the House Committee on Ways & Means and a member of the Social Security panel. ”President Obama has done nothing to save these important programs, the Senate the same. Only House Republicans have shown the courage to pass a plan to save Medicare for every generation, young and old.”

“We need a president with the backbone to sit down with Congress and save these programs for every generation once and for all. Act now and we can preserve them; kick the can down the road for more years and it becomes much harder,” added Brady. “With the retirement and health care of our elderly at stake, why wait?”

The President’s health care reform law has done little to make Medicare solvent. “The House has passed a budget with a plan to save Medicare, while ObamaCare begins stripping the program of a half-billion in funding AFTER the November election,” Brady continued. “It’s past time to put these programs on a firmer financial footing, especially as the baby boomers retire and we are all living longer.”

ponsored: Get a free copy of Kevin Price’s best selling book, How Many Revolt’s Required. Endorsed by Dick Armey and others, simply send email info@usdailyreview.com! State “free book” on the subject line.

By US Daily Review Staff.

In the “too little, too late” department, medical doctors are now up in arms over the changes in health care driven by Barack Obama’s healthcare policies.

A critical method that healthcare reform will use to decrease the number of the uninsured is to force States to expand Medicaid eligibility. The U.S. Supreme Court has specifically agreed to consider arguments about the constitutionality of the Medicaid Expansion Provisions (MXPs) in the case against the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “ObamaCare”) brought by Florida and 25 other States.

The government argues that MXPs aren’t really coercive but are simply a condition for continued receipt of Medicaid funding. States could simply withdraw from Medicaid and lose the entirety of their federal funding for indigent medical care—while their citizens continue to pay federal taxes to fund Medicaid in other States.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) argues in an amicus brief filed Jan 17 that such a Hobson’s choice is no choice at all. “Regardless of the choice each State makes, that State’s spending will increase.” The State’s taxpayers will be burdened to pay for the increase without an affirmative decision of its legislature and governor, but by federal fiat. Thus, the MXPs are “an assault on the sovereignty of the States and the rights of their citizens.”

Many States are in a precarious fiscal situation, and according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), “the primary driver of the fiscal pressure confronting the state and local sector is the continued growth in health-related costs.”

“Our nation cannot plunder the treasuries of its political subdivisions…without putting the existence of the States in jeopardy,” writes AAPS.

The onerous burdens that the MXPs lay on the States continue into the indefinite future. In effect, the MXPs place federal and State spending on “auto pilot” beyond the end of the term of this Congress, thus withholding legislative power from future Congresses and veto power from future Presidents.

Additionally, directing States to spend money in particular ways is not among the Constitutionally enumerated powers of Congress.

If the MXPs are unconstitutional, then the ACA must be declared unconstitutional in its entirety, AAPS argues, citing AAPS’s separate amicus brief filed on Jan 6 http://www.aapsonline.org/fl-v-hhs-amicus-01-06-2012.pdf on the issue of severability. “Severance, in the absence of a severability clause, wreaks havoc on the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and ignores the Separation of Powers doctrine,” states the AAPS brief.

The brief on the Medicaid provisions is available online http://www.aapsonline.org/fl-v-hhs-amicus-01-17-2012.pdf.

According to an organization statement, “AAPS, a national organization of physicians in all specialties, was founded in 1943 to preserve and promote the practice of private medicine and the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship.”

By US Daily Review Staff.

Famous people are not the only victims of medical mistakes.

A new study released today by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that hospital employees are only reporting fourteen percent of all medical errors and usually don’t change their practices to prevent future harm to patients.

The study was based on an independent review of patient records.  Federal regulations require hospitals to track all medical errors and adverse events that harm patients and to implement preventive measures to protect patients.  Only five of the 293 reported cases of medical errors reviewed by federal investigators led to changes in policies or practices by hospitals to prevent harm to patients.

“One in four hospital patients are harmed by medical errors and infections, which translates to about 9 million people each year,” said Lisa McGiffert, Director of Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project.  “Today’s report confirms what many other studies have already documented.  Too many hospitals are doing a poor job of tracking preventable infections and medical errors and making the changes necessary to keep patients safe.  It’s time that hospitals make patient safety a higher priority.”

The OIG report recommends that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide hospitals with a standard list of medical errors that should be tracked and reported to the agency.  But Consumers Union noted that public reporting of medical errors is critical to driving improvement in patient safety.

“Hospitals should be pushed to do a better job at tracking medical harm, but public reporting is what drives change and the public should have access to this critical information,” said McGiffert.  ”The solutions arrived at in this report take us down the tired and worn out path of secret reporting of medical harm.”

A previous 2010 study by the OIG estimated that an estimated 15,000 Medicare patients experienced medical errors in the hospital that contributed to their deaths each month. That amounts to about 180,000 patients annually.  The OIG calculated that Medicare patients harmed during that month required an additional $324 million in hospital care. The study estimated the annual cost for these events in hospital care alone at $4.4 billion

The study was based on an independent review of patient records.  Federal regulations require hospitals to track all medical errors and adverse events that harm patients and to implement preventive measures to protect patients.  Only five of the 293 reported cases of medical errors reviewed by federal investigators led to changes in policies or practices by hospitals to prevent harm to patients.

“One in four hospital patients are harmed by medical errors and infections, which translates to about 9 million people each year,” said Lisa McGiffert, Director of Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project.  “Today’s report confirms what many other studies have already documented.  Too many hospitals are doing a poor job of tracking preventable infections and medical errors and making the changes necessary to keep patients safe.  It’s time that hospitals make patient safety a higher priority.”

The OIG report recommends that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide hospitals with a standard list of medical errors that should be tracked and reported to the agency.  But Consumers Union noted that public reporting of medical errors is critical to driving improvement in patient safety.

“Hospitals should be pushed to do a better job at tracking medical harm, but public reporting is what drives change and the public should have access to this critical information,” said McGiffert.  ”The solutions arrived at in this report take us down the tired and worn out path of secret reporting of medical harm.”

A previous 2010 study by the OIG estimated that an estimated 15,000 Medicare patients experienced medical errors in the hospital that contributed to their deaths each month. That amounts to about 180,000 patients annually.  The OIG calculated that Medicare patients harmed during that month required an additional $324 million in hospital care. The study estimated the annual cost for these events in hospital care alone at $4.4 billion

By US Daily Review Staff.

The American Telemedicine Association projects an exponential growth in the adoption of telemedicine and mHealth technologies as a record number of consumers are entering fee-capped managed care insurance plans.  Managed Care, which pays a flat fee to treat health conditions, creates a powerful incentive for providers to leverage the power of remote healthcare technologies to maintain or improve quality and lower costs.

Today almost one quarter of all Americans, 73 million patients, are covered under a managed care health insurance program. This is up from 58 million patients in 2005, a 26 percent increase in just 6 years.

“The trend is great news for all forms of telemedicine, especially for mHealth and other emerging technologies, which have created great interest but are rarely covered by insurers,” said Jonathan Linkous, Chief Executive Office of the American Telemedicine Association. “This shift in the way healthcare is paid will put providers in driver’s seat when it comes to choosing the best way to deliver healthcare and whether or not to use telemedicine.”  Through web TV services like Skype and other technologies, some people will be able to be treated at home.

The move to managed care is a dramatic shift away from traditional fee-for-service payments, which allowed providers to bill for as many services as possible, regardless of need or effectiveness. This traditional reimbursement model is heavily regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which have strongly discouraged the deployment of telemedicine due chiefly to concerns about increased cost.

Managed care, on the other hand, places a cap on spending and allows the provider to decide what and how services should be delivered. Such a system is ideal for accelerating the use of telemedicine in the delivery of care. Remote healthcare technologies can now be integrated into a system of care that will comprehensively and cost-effectively treat patient conditions.

According to a company statement, “The American Telemedicine Association is the leading international resource and advocate promoting the use of advanced remote medical technologies. ATA and its diverse membership work to fully integrate telemedicine into healthcare systems to improve quality, equity and affordability of healthcare throughout the world. Established in 1993, ATA is headquartered inWashington, D.C. For more information, visit www.americantelemed.org.”

Allowing private plans to compete with traditional Medicare will help lower costs and spur innovation. 

By Keith Rodebush, Contributor to US Daily Review.

When Ida May Fuller received the first Social Security check for $22.54 in 1940 she had paid into the system in the amount of $24.75. By the time of her death in 1975 at the age of 100 years she had received payments totaling $22,882 and change. Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Of course it is, money from current investors was used to pay Ida May’s bill far beyond her investment. But there is a distinction. Social Security is a mandatory Ponzi scheme. This is no small difference as the downfall of all Ponzi schemes is when financial downturns make it impossible to keep up payments to past investors and the house of cards falls. With government, they just raise taxes or print money and the scheme rolls on in perpetuity; an effectual anchor on the economy.

Is Social Security constitutional? Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to “…lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Therefore, in theory the imposition of taxes to ensure that elderly citizens are not destitute is not beyond the reach of Congress. Whether the actual legislation imposed the tax uniformly, which is required by the same section, or whether it was coercive, RE: unemployment insurance by States, was decided by the SCOTUS in 1937. I fail to see how any court could ever decide otherwise after 76 years of implementation. Social Security is Constitutional. Whether it is intelligent is debatable. Notice also, that it is a general tax; nothing less, with no earmarks for use. There has never been a Social Security ‘fund’ for investing in your retirement. Taxes are entered into the Treasury and future demands are withdrawn from the Treasury with no required relation betwixt the two actions. And therein of course, lies the problem with which we have yet to deal.

So the question is this; “Can the American government continue to operate a Ponzi scheme without bankrupting the nation?” The reason the Founding Fathers worked so hard to minimize the power of the federal government is that they understood that with power comes corruption. When the government is empowered with providing support or relief to any individual or entity, it will leverage that power and perpetually increase and abuse it to the point of tyranny. At some point they determined the good people of America would right any wrongs that became too burdensome. Relating to a different Constitutional issue Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Wilson C. Nicholas stated, “…that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction when it shall produce ill effects.”

Social Security, Medicare et al are creating ill effects. Will the good sense of this country correct it? It remains to be seen, though one must decline exuberance when members of the GOP in recent debates engage in the typical demagoguery that inherently accompanies such legislation. In fact one can argue that instead of providing for the general welfare of the public such programs actually provide for our general demise. No matter what manner of calibrations Congress may ultimately make to these programs, they will remain a vehicle for unscrupulous career politicians to make unreasonable promises to gullible citizens in return for votes. It is unlikely to the degree of impossibility that America will allow these programs to be completely terminated. The question then becomes; “How can we continue these programs while minimizing the corruption and politicizing of same?”

There is only one answer in my mind. Medicaid must be phased out federally and returned to the States. As parens patriae the State is responsible for its citizens. Local control of indigent programs will ensure the greatest efficiency. Social Security and Medicare should be separated from the general government and implemented as self-reliant, free-market entities. Governments only role would be to ensure unfettered access to all citizens so inclined to participate. Participation must be voluntary with citizens taking full responsibility for their choice to decline. The system would basically become a large insurance corporation with a board of directors, CEO, CFO etc., all charged with operating within free-market principles to implement a budget that is revenue neutral. Any new promise of benefits must be met with increased revenue. Any decrease in revenue must be met with cuts in benefits or administrative costs. Yearly financial reports should be required and reviewed by third party accounting. The decisions made by the board and administrators will determine the confidence of the public and thereby the participation rate. If Americans want supplemental insurance, they must pay for it at market rates. The system will live or die by its own merits.

Obviously, such a large change in course will require a national conversation, true principled leadership and the votes of the People to put in place the people needed for passage in Congress. Barring this or something similar, we will continue to revisit these issues, until the day when the sheer weight of the liabilities will completely crash our economy resulting in a depression like we have never seen. The resulting chaos, starvation and violence that will ensue may well transition this nation into an entirely different form of government, most likely dictatorial and most definitely tyrannical.

Keith D. Rodebush is a Christian, a businessman, a writer and an armchair scholar. He has a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Arkansas. Keith is currently working on a novel and periodically writes at his blog “Ignarus Semino Dominatus”.