#hartmann report

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Thom Hartmann

Back in 1967, a friend of mine and I hitchhiked from East Lansing, Michigan to San Francisco to spend the summer in Haight-Ashbury. One ride dropped us off in Sparks, Nevada, and within minutes of putting our thumbs out a city police car stopped and arrested us for vagrancy.

The cop, a young guy with an oversized mustache who was apologetic for the city’s policy, drove us to the desert a mile or so beyond the edge of town, where we hitchhiked standing by a distressing light-post covered with graffiti reading “39 hours without a ride,” “going on our third day,” and “anybody got any water?”

Vagrancy laws were so 20th century.

Today, the US Supreme Court heard a case involving efforts by the City of Grants Pass, Oregon to keep homeless people off its streets and out of its parks and other public property. The city had tried a number of things when the problem began to explode in the last year of the Trump administration, as The Oregonian newspaper notes:

“They discussed putting them in their old jail, creating an unwanted list, posting signs at the city border or driving people out of town... Currently, officers patrol the city nearly every day, Johnson said, handing out [$295] citations to people who are camping or sleeping on public property or for having too many belongings with them.”

The explosion in housing costs has triggered two crises: homelessness and inflation. The former is harming the livability of our cities and towns, and the Fed’s reaction to the latter threatens an incumbency-destroying recession just as we head into what will almost certainly be the most important election in American history.

The problem with housing inflation is so severe today that without it the nation’s overall core CPI inflation rate would be in the neighborhood of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s 2% goal.

Graphic based on BLM data and interpretation by The Financial Times

Both homelessness and today’s inflation are the result of America — unlike many other countries — allowing housing to become a commodity that can be traded and speculated in by financial markets and overseas investors.

Forty-three years into America’s Reaganomics experiment, homelessness has gone from a problem to a crisis. Rarely, though, do you hear that Wall Street — a prime beneficiary of Reagan’s deregulation campaign — is helping cause it.

32% seems to be the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32% of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes.

And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires want to make a killing.

It wasn’t always this way in America.

Housing prices have spun out of control since my dad bought his house in 1957 when I was six years old. He got a Veteran’s Administration-subsidized loan and picked up the brand-new 3-bedroom-1-bath ranch house my 3 brothers and I grew up in, in suburban south Lansing, Michigan. It cost him $13,000, which was about twice what he made every year working a good union job in a tool-and-die shop.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s the median price of a single-family house was 2.2 times the median American family income. Today, the Fed says, the median house sells for $479,500 while the median American personal income is $41,000 — a ratio of more than ten-to-one between housing costs and annual income.

As the Zillow study notes:

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32% [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper.

We’re told that America’s cities have seen this increase in housing costs since the 1950s in some part because of the growing wealth and population of this country. There were, after all, 168 million people in the US the year my dad bought his house; today there are 330 million.

And it’s true that we haven’t been building enough new housing, particularly low-income housing, as 43 years of neoliberal Reaganomics have driven down wages and income for working-class people relative to all of their expenses while stopping the construction of virtually any new subsidized low-income housing.

But that’s not the only, or even the main dynamic, driving housing prices into the stratosphere — and, as a consequence, the crisis in homelessness — over the past decade. You can thank speculation for much of that.

As the Zillow-funded study noted:

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

So how did we get here?

It started with a wave of foreign buyers over the past 30 years (particularly from China, Canada, Mexico, India and Colombia) who, in just the one single year of 2020, picked up over 154,000 homes as their way of parking money in America. Which is part of why there are over 20 times more empty houses in America than there are homeless people.

As Marketwatch noted in a 2015 article titled “The Danger of Foreign Buyers Gobbling Up American Homes”:

“Unusual high appreciation of the aforementioned urban centers is due to the ever growing influx of foreign buyers — mostly wealthy Chinese — who view American residential real estate as the safest investment commodity. … According to a National Realtors Association survey, the Chinese spent $22 billion on U.S. housing in 12 months through March 2014…. [Other foreign buyers primarily include] Canadians, British, Indians and Mexicans.”

But foreign investment has been down for the past few years; what’s taken over and is really driving home prices today are massive, multi-billion-dollar US-based funds that sweep into neighborhoods and buy everything available, bidding against families and driving up housing prices.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville, “In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; the investment goliaths use finely-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

After stripping neighborhoods of homes families can buy, they then begin raising rents as high as the market will bear.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, for example, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:

“The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…”

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.

“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

In 2018, corporations bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that, “Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

This all really took off around a decade ago, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that — in the wake of the 2008 Bush Housing Crash — snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premier lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to regulate the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

Meanwhile, as unionization levels here remain among the lowest in the developed world, Reagan’s ongoing war on working people continues to wipe out America’s families.

At the same time that housing prices, both to purchase and to rent, are being driven through the roof by foreign and Wall Street investors, a survey published by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that American families are in crisis.

Their study found:

— “Thirty-eight percent (38%) of [all] households across the nation report facing serious financial problems in the previous few months.

— “There is a sharp income divide in serious financial problems, as 59% of those with annual incomes below $50,000 report facing serious financial problems in the past few months, compared with 18% of households with annual incomes of $50,000 or more.

— “These serious financial problems are cited despite 67% of households reporting that in the past few months, they have received financial assistance from the government.

— “Another significant problem for many U.S. households is losing their savings during the COVID-19 outbreak. Nineteen percent (19%) of U.S. households report losing all of their savings during the COVID-19 outbreak and not currently having any savings to fall back on.

— “At the time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction ban expired, 27% of renters nationally reported serious problems paying their rent in the past few months.”

These are not separate issues, and they are driving an explosion in homelessness.

The Zillow study found similarly damning data:

— “Communities where people spend more than 32% of their income on rent can expect a more rapid increase in homelessness.

— “Income growth has not kept pace with rents, leading to an affordability crunch with cascading effects that, for people on the bottom economic rung, increases the risk of homelessness.

— “The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15% of the U.S. population — and 47% of people experiencing homelessness.”

The Zillow study makes grim reading and is worth checking out. In community after community, when rent prices exceeded 32% of median household income, homelessness exploded. It’s measurable, predictable, and is destroying what’s left of the American working class, particularly minorities.

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle-class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through homeownership: Over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity. And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to long-term economic struggles and homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable. This requires government intervention in the so-called “free market.”

— Last year, Canada banned most foreign buyers from buying residential property as a way of controlling their housing inflation.

— New Zealand similarly passed its no-foreigners law (except for Singaporeans and Australians) in 2018.

— Thailand requires a minimum investment of $1.2 million and the equivalent of a green card.

— Greece bans most non-EU citizens from buying real estate in most of the country.

— To buy residential housing in Denmark, it must be your primary residence and you must have lived in the country for at least 5 years.

— Vietnam, Austria, Hungary, and Cyprus also heavily restrict who can buy residential property, where, and under what terms.

This isn’t rocket science; the problem could be easily fixed by Congress if there was a genuine willingness to protect our real estate market from the vultures who’ve been circling it for years.

Unfortunately, when Clarence Thomas was the deciding vote to allow billionaires and hedge funds to legally bribe members of Congress in Citizens United, he and his four fellow Republicans opened the floodgates to “contributions” and “gifts” from foreign and Wall Street interests to pay off legislators to ignore the problem.

Because there’s no lobbying group for the interests of average homeowners or the homeless, it’s up to us to raise hell with our elected officials. The number for the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.

If ever there was a time to solve this problem — and regulate corporate and foreign investment in American single-family housing — it’s now.

[thatstormygeek]

The simple reality is that the future of American democracy is as much on the line in this case as it was in 1866. That was completely lost in yesterday’s arguments: it should have been central to them. So, why did even the “liberal” wing of the Court go along with this charade? Was it because, like Mitt Romney said of his Republican Senate colleagues who failed to convict Trump in his second impeachment, they were afraid for their own safety?

[...]

This is how fascists and authoritarians have seized and held power for all the millennia we’ve had what we call civilization: by inducing terror. Just ask Ruby Freeman or Paul Pelosi. Or read Shakespeare or the Bible. Or talk with Alexi Navalny’s wife. Did they never learn in American History class that there was a time, spanning about a generation, when democracy had been replaced by strongman oligarchy in the South and Trump is merely echoing the values and postures of that time? That the 14th Amendment was written to prevent or rescue us from exactly today’s situation?

[lenbryant]

Great take from Thomas Hartmann. Scrub past the ads.

[arlengrossman]

America Can’t Let the 9/11 War Lies Go Down the Memory Hole

By Thom Hartmann/ HartmannReport.com/ September 11, 2023 Today is 9/11, the event that first brought America together and then was cynically exploited by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to have a war against Iraq, following their illegal invasion of Afghanistan just a bit more than a year earlier. Yet the media today (so far, anyway) is curiously silent about Bush and Cheney’s lies.  Given the…

[garudabluffs]

When Speech Becomes Sedition

"When speech becomes sedition, And truth’s locked away, They twist the world, reshape our vision, To make the light fade gray."

The song that was inspired by this article is here.

READ MORE https://hartmannreport.com/p/when-speech-becomes-sedition-tales-d28

70 Comments

VIDEO 11/01/2024 https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house

READ MORE https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-recession-racket-musk-trump-and-2bd/comments

40 Comments

[todaysdocument]

Memorandum from Frank Pagnotta to Jane Dannenhauer Containing the Weekly Report on Vice Presidential Staff Changes

Collection GRF-0452: Nelson Rockefeller Vice Presidential Nomination Background Investigation MaterialsSeries: Vice Presidential Nomination Background Investigation FilesFile Unit: Vice President

THE WHITE HOUSE

Washington

August 13, 1974

MEMORANDUM FOR: Miss Jane Dannenhauer

Staff Assistant, Security

Mr. Louis B. Sims, Special Agent in Charge

Technical Security Division

SUBJECT: Weekly Report

The following changes in personnel were made in the Office of the Vice President during the period Tuesday, August 6, to close of business Monday, August 12, 1974:

[underlined and in capital letters] CHANGE

Gerald R. Ford Vice President to the President

effective 12:05 p.m.

Thursday, August 9, 1974

Robert T. Hartmann Chief of Staff to Counsellor to President

effective Thursday, 9 August 1974

[signature in ink] Frank R. Pagnotta

cc: Mr. Jerry Bechtle

[posttexasstressdisorder]

How Trump's billionaires are hijacking affordable housing

Thom Hartmann

October 24, 2024 8:52AM ET

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

America’s morbidly rich billionaires are at it again, this time screwing the average family’s ability to have decent, affordable housing in their never-ending quest for more, more, more. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Denmark have had enough and done something about it: we should, too.

There are a few things that are essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that should never be purely left to the marketplace; these are the most important sectors where government intervention, regulation, and even subsidy are not just appropriate but essential. Housing is at the top of that list.

A few days ago I noted how, since the Reagan Revolution, the cost of housing has exploded in America, relative to working class income.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income.

ALSO READ: He’s mentally ill:' NY laughs ahead of Trump's Madison Square Garden rally

In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

And now we’ve surged past a new tipping point, causing the homelessness that’s plagued America’s cities since George W. Bush’s deregulation-driven housing- and stock-market crash in 2008, exacerbated by Trump’s bungling America’s pandemic response.

And the principal cause of both that crash and today’s crisis of homelessness and housing affordability has one, single, primary cause: billionaires treating housing as an investment commodity.

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

— Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities. — Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets. — Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person. — Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties. — Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What’s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily. (Emphasis theirs.)

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

The math, however, is irrefutable.

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.

As the Zillow study notes:

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper. That Zillow-funded study laid it out:

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

This trend is massive.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:

“In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

After stripping neighborhoods of homes young families can afford to buy, billionaires then begin raising rents to extract as much cash as they can from local working class communities.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:

“The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street billionaire investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…”

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.”

It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.

“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:

“[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021. “Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.”

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:

“Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.

This all really took off around a decade ago following the Bush Crash, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

As Zillow found:

“The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15 percent of the U.S. population — and 47 percent of people experiencing homelessness.”

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through home ownership: over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

America should, too.

ALSO READ: Not even ‘Fox and Friends’ can hide Trump’s dementia

[misfitwashere]

If You Don't Know Medicare Advantage Is a Scam, You're Not Paying Attention

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Don't be fooled about what it is—and who is profiting.

Thom Hartmann

Oct 07, 2023

Common Dreams

President George W. Bush and Republicans (and a handful of on-the-take Democrats) in Congress created the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies.

Those companies, and their executives, then recycle some of that profit back into politicians’ pockets via the Citizens United legalized bribery loophole created by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Just the overcharges happening right now in that scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs. These ripoffs — that our federal government seems to have no interest in stopping — are draining the Medicare trust fund while ensnaring gullible seniors in private insurance programs where they’re often denied life-saving care.

Real Medicare pays bills when they’re presented. Medicare Advantage insurance companies, on the other hand, get a fixed dollar amount every year for each of the people enrolled in their programs, regardless of how much they spent on each customer.

As a result, Medicare Advantage programs make the greatest profits for their CEOs and shareholders when they actively refuse to pay for care, something that happens frequently. It’s a safe bet that nearly 100 percent of the people who sign up for Advantage programs don’t know this and don’t have any idea how badly screwed they could be if they get seriously ill.

Not only that, when people do figure out they’ve been duped and try to get back on real Medicare, the same insurance companies often punish them by refusing to write Medigap plans (that fill in the 20% hole in real Medicare). They can’t do that when you first sign up when you turn 65, but if you “leave” real Medicare for privatized Medicare Advantage, it can be damn hard to get back on it.

The doctors’ group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) just published a shocking report on the extent of the Medicare Advantage ripoffs — both to individual customers and to Medicare itself — that every American should know about.

The report, titled Our Payments, Their Profits, opens with this shocking exposé:

“By our estimate, and based on 2022 spending, Medicare Advantage overcharges taxpayers by a minimum of 22% or $88 billion per year, and potentially by up to 35% or $140 billion. By comparison, Part B premiums in 2022 totaled approximately $131 billion, and overall federal spending on Part D drug benefits cost approximately $126 billion. Either of these — or other crucial aspects of Medicare and Medicaid — could be funded entirely by eliminating overcharges in the Medicare Advantage program. “Medicare Advantage, also known as MA or Medicare Part C, is a privately administered insurance program that uses a capitated payment structure, as opposed to the fee-for-service (FFS) structure of Traditional Medicare or TM. Instead of paying directly for the health care of beneficiaries, the federal government gives a lump sum of money to a third party (generally a commercial insurer) to ‘manage’ patient care.”

With real Medicare and a Medigap plan, you talk with your physician or hospital and decide on your treatment, they bill Medicare, and you never see or hear about the bill. There is nobody between you and your physician or hospital and Medicare only goes after the payment they’ve made if they sniff out a fraud.

With Medicare Advantage, on the other hand, your insurance company gets a lump-sum payment from Medicare every year and keeps the difference between what they get and what they pay out. They then insert themselves between you and your doctor or hospital to avoid paying for whatever they can.

Whatever you decide on regarding treatment, many Advantage insurance company will regularly second-guess and do everything they can to intimidate you into paying yourself out-of-pocket. Often, they simply refuse payment and wait for you to file a complaint against them; for people seriously ill the cumbersome “appeals” process is often more than they can handle.

As a result, hospitals and doctor groups across the nation are beginning to refuse to take Medicare Advantage patients. California-based Scripps Health, for example, cares for around 30,000 people on Medicare Advantage and recently notified all of them that Scripps will no longer offer medical services to them unless they pay out-of-pocket or revert back to real Medicare.

They made this decision because over $75 million worth of services and procedures their physicians had recommended to their patients were turned down by Medicare Advantage insurance companies. In many cases, Scripps had already provided the care and is now stuck with the bills that the Advantage companies refuse to pay.

Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder told MedPage Today:

“We are a patient care organization and not a patient denial organization and, in many ways, the model of managed care has always been about denying or delaying care – at least economically. That is why denials, [prior] authorizations and administrative processes have become a very big issue for physicians and hospitals...”

Similarly, the Mayo Clinic has warned its customers in Florida and Arizona that they won’t accept Medicare Advantage any more, either. Increasing numbers of physician groups and hospitals are simply over being ripped off by Advantage insurance companies.

Not only is the Medicare Advantage scam a screw job for healthcare providers and people who are on the programs and are unfortunate enough to get sick, it’s also preventing Americans from getting expanded benefits from real Medicare.

As the PNHP report notes, for real Medicare to provide comprehensive vision, dental, and hearing benefits to all Medicare recipients would cost the system around $84 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Instead, though, the Medicare system is burdened with at least that amount of money in over-payments to Medicare Advantage providers — over-payments that have no health benefit whatsoever and merely inflate the companies’ profits.

A hundred billion dollars in excess profits can be put to a lot of uses, and the health insurance industry is quite good at it. The former CEO of UnitedHealth, “Dollar” Bill McGuire, for example, made off with over $1.5 billion dollars for his efforts.

And, because five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision, some of these companies allocate millions every year (a mere drop in the bucket) to pay off loyal members of Congress and to dangle high-paying future jobs to high-level employees of CMS who have the power to keep the gravy train going and thwart prosecutions.

As PNHP noted:

“Medicare Advantage is just another example of the endless greed of the insurance industry poisoning American health care, siphoning money from vulnerable patients while delaying and denying necessary and often life-saving treatment. While there is obvious reason to fix these issues in MA and to expand Traditional Medicare for the sake of all beneficiaries, the deep structural problems with our health care system will only be fixed when we achieve improved Medicare for All.”

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Representatives Pocan, Khanna, and Schakowsky have introduced the “Save Medicare Act” that would ban Advantage companies from using the word Medicare in their advertising.

They made a video about it that’s well worth sharing with friends and family:

As Schakowsky, Khanna, and Pocan note, “Only Medicare is Medicare.” Don’t be fooled by the Medicare Advantage scam.

And now that you know, pass it on and save somebody else’s health!

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 8, 2024

Sensory prediction error drives subconscious motor learning outside of the laboratory. Albert, S. T., Blaum, E. C., & Blustein, D. H. (2023). Journal of Neurophysiology, 130(2), 427–435.

Working memory load impairs transfer learning in human adults. Balter, L. J. T., & Raymond, J. E. (2023). Psychological Research, 87(7), 2138–2145.

Objects sharpen visual scene representations: evidence from MEG decoding. Brandman, T., & Peelen, M. V. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(16), 9524–9531.

Specific patterns of neural activity in the hippocampus after massed or distributed spatial training. Centofante, E., Fralleoni, L., Lupascu, C. A., Migliore, M., Rinaldi, A., & Mele, A. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 13357.

Hormonal coordination of motor output and internal prediction of sensory consequences in an electric fish. Fukutomi, M., & Carlson, B. A. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3350-3359.e4.

Subcortico-amygdala pathway processes innate and learned threats. Khalil, V., Faress, I., Mermet-Joret, N., Kerwin, P., Yonehara, K., & Nabavi, S. (2023). eLife, 12, e85459.

Neural mechanisms underlying uninstructed orofacial movements during reward-based learning behaviors. Li, W.-R., Nakano, T., Mizutani, K., Matsubara, T., Kawatani, M., Mukai, Y., … Yamashita, T. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3436-3451.e7.

Monkeys exhibit human-like gaze biases in economic decisions. Lupkin, S. M., & McGinty, V. B. (2023). eLife, 12, e78205.

Widespread coding of navigational variables in prefrontal cortex. Maisson, D. J.-N., Cervera, R. L., Voloh, B., Conover, I., Zambre, M., Zimmermann, J., & Hayden, B. Y. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3478-3488.e3.

Synaptic variance and action potential firing of cerebellar output neurons during motor learning in larval zebrafish. Najac, M., McLean, D. L., & Raman, I. M. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3299-3311.e3.

Novelty and uncertainty differentially drive exploration across development. Nussenbaum, K., Martin, R. E., Maulhardt, S., Yang, Y. (Jen), Bizzell-Hatcher, G., Bhatt, N. S., … Hartley, C. A. (2023). eLife, 12, e84260.

Ants combine object affordance with latent learning to make efficient foraging decisions. Poissonnier, L.-A., Hartmann, Y., & Czaczkes, T. J. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(35), e2302654120.

VIP interneurons in sensory cortex encode sensory and action signals but not direct reward signals. Ramamurthy, D. L., Chen, A., Zhou, J., Park, C., Huang, P. C., Bharghavan, P., … Feldman, D. E. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3398-3408.e7.

A stochastic model of hippocampal synaptic plasticity with geometrical readout of enzyme dynamics. Rodrigues, Y. E., Tigaret, C. M., Marie, H., O’Donnell, C., & Veltz, R. (2023). eLife, 12, e80152.

Sequence anticipation and spike-timing-dependent plasticity emerge from a predictive learning rule. Saponati, M., & Vinck, M. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 4985.

Statistical inference on representational geometries. Schütt, H. H., Kipnis, A. D., Diedrichsen, J., & Kriegeskorte, N. (2023). eLife, 12, e82566.

High-resolution volumetric imaging constrains compartmental models to explore synaptic integration and temporal processing by cochlear nucleus globular bushy cells. Spirou, G. A., Kersting, M., Carr, S., Razzaq, B., Yamamoto Alves Pinto, C., Dawson, M., … Manis, P. B. (2023). eLife, 12, e83393.

Using occipital ⍺-bursts to modulate behavior in real-time. Vigué-Guix, I., & Soto-Faraco, S. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(16), 9465–9477.

Octave illusion: stimulation frequencies can modulate perception. Whittom, A., Couture, F., Chauvette, L., & Sharp, A. (2023). Psychological Research, 87(7), 2183–2191.

Completeness out of incompleteness: Inferences from regularities in imperfect information ensembles. Zhu, J., Xu, H., Shi, B., Lu, Y., Chen, H., Shen, M., & Zhou, J. (2023). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(9), 1203–1220.

[kolajmag]

THIS WEEK AT KOLAJ MAGAZINE

Cherished, Intertwined, Unmasked, Repurposed, & Whimsical

FROM THE PRINT ISSUE My House Too Reports on how Danielle Cole

FROM THE PRINT ISSUE Cherishing the Beauty of Ephemeral Objects Helen Hartmann profiles Dutch Artist Anna van der Putte

FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY Repurposed art is a passion Caroline della Porta | Picton, New Zealand

FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY Colorful and Whimsical Bonniediva Shorr | Gurnee, Illinois, USA

COLLAGE BOOKS Neurophototherapy: Playfully Unmasking with Photography and Collage

KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined at the New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

COLLAGE ON VIEW Deconstructed Heroes at NOLA ‘Nacular Studio and Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Read the full update

*****************************

Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

SUBSCRIBE | CURRENT ISSUE | GET A COPY

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[noctiilio]

Gensokyo 199x (09/2021)

Track 5: "Busy Line Shuffle"

Original: Zun - "Last Remote"/"Hartmann's Youkai Girl" Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism

Arranged by: Nocti (@noctiilio)

Genre: Boom Bap hip hop

"Reports from Gensokyo claim that their phone won't stop ringing. If, annoyed by the noise, you were to pick it up, a cheerful voice would pipe up, hi! hi!! hello!!! and immediately put you on hold forever. It seems to be an elaborate prank from a fun-loving youkai, but nothing more than simple good spirited mischief." Get the album >here< it's free! Also available on Youtube here!

[archivist-crow]

Odds and Ends:

HORSING AROUND

In May 1906, miller J.C. Playfair of Lambhurst, England, went to his stable to check on his horses. All the horses were turned around in their stalls—all but one, which was missing. After checking all the places where a horse could be, Playfair began to look in unexpected places. Adjoining the stable was a tiny hay room; its doorway was barely large enough for a man to go through. Inside was the horse. A wall had to be knocked down to remove the animal.

Also from May, 1906, comes a report from Franz Hartmann, a noted German physician and theosophist of the time. Hartmann relays an incident that happened to his brother-in-law, a count and a captain in the Bavarian cavalry. One of the captain's horses became sickly, and the groom told him that each morning the horse was covered with sweat and its mane and tail were braided. The count decided to spend the night in the stall. At two in the morning, the animal began to tremble, and the astonished count saw its tail and mane become whipped into intricate plaits. The horse's panic left it coated in foam.

In 1918 the great magician Harry Houdini decided to make an elephant vanish. While Jennie the pachyderm was bowing to the audience, Houdini's assistants set up an eight-foot-square cabinet with solid sides and top, hinged doors at the back, and curtains at the front. The cabinet was set up two feet above the ground, precluding use of a trap door. At Houdini's cue, Jennie entered the cabinet, and the curtains were closed. Houdini then fired a pistol, the curtains opened, and the elephant was gone. How the ingenious escape was managed remains a matter of debate. When asked, the magician would respond, "Even the elephant doesn't know how it is done."

Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009

[hpowellsmith]

Hello! What do I need to do to make Hartmann more relaxed? there was a route where he let Max go and then he went to the salon with MC but I haven't been able to get it to happen again

Trivia time: I had a report where a kind player let me know that Hartmann apologised after not having done anything/the MC had told them it was fine, and they thought it was a bug. But it was just Hartmann overthinking, because they are an unrelaxed soul.

However: you can encourage them to be more rebellious using this post as reference.

[arlengrossman]

How It Happened

https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-billionaires-won-the-50-year-841?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=302288&post_id=151253908&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=r3bio&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email The Hartmann Report The Billionaires Won: The 50-Year War on Democracy That Built Trump’s Oligarchy and Killed the American Dream Bought politicians, and a court on their…

[garudabluffs]

"...a plug in for a documentary I watched last night -- it's called "Where to Invade Next", compiled by Michael Moore. He tours some European countries and one N. African one (Tunisia) to see if there's any good ideas/practices he can bring back to the U.S. While he doesn't go into religion, there's bits on education, justice (in terms of prisons and drugs), and labor practices. I was left with the impression that your country's woes are due to a philosophy of selfishness - as expressed by one Icelandic woman, "it's all about me, rather than we". If I wished to simplify the woes of the U.S., I'd boil it down to that also. There are some of your citizens who recognize the value in others, but for the large part I'd say that your Egos are way too big. This is why, as Moore discovers, the male bankers were all prosecuted -- yes, that's correct, bankers were prosecuted -- after the '08 collapse of the financial system -- and the women replaced them, because women place we over me. Anyways, some good lessons for America in this documentary." - 1 of 15 Comments

Is SCOTUS About to Put Religion Over Civil Society?

So here we are in 2023 and the real beliefs and plans of the Founding generation — slaveholders and abolitionists alike — have dissolved into a blur of BS, Qanon, and fundamentalist religion 02/01/2023

"The Court may force the state to prioritize religion above normal business and governmental concerns, in other words."

"[Or]the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose members, a Massachusetts court has ruled, are legally entitled to sport their unique headwear (a colander) in official government ID photos.

Or Rastafarians, who may argue that marijuana is their sacramental herb and they should be allowed to work under its influence.

After all, the IRS has acknowledged all of these groups as legitimate religions by granting them tax-exempt status. While that may deprive the government and some communities of income and property taxes, it generally doesn’t hurt anybody."

READ MORE https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-scotus-about-to-put-religion-over