The Censored Presidential Debate

As usual the outcast media censored the U.S. Presidential candidate debates in 1996.  Fortunately Brian Lamb at C-SPAN provided a platform for the candidates to share their views on cable television...

Texas' Biggest Welfare Recipients

Dr. Reuben Elovitz, Welfare Recipient 

Thankfully more researchers are sifting through the data on who collects Medicare taxes.  The Texas Tribune published a table of the greatest Medicare welfare recipients in Texas...

Medicare Data Shines Light on Billions Paid to TX Doctors

Highlights from the research:

• 342 Texas doctors were paid over $1 million by Medicare in 2012
• 20 doctors hauled in over $3 million annually from Medicare
• Missing context like doctor's costs and number of patients treated make the data incomplete

Dependence as a Key to Holding People Back

A person's historical level of self-sufficiency is often predictive of future well-being.  The inverse of self-sufficient is dependency, which Thomas Sowell argues is a key to holding people back economically...

Who Collects That 3% Medicare Tax?

We've known for a long time exactly who pays the Medicare tax but thanks to newly released Medicare payment information we are able to confirm the primary collectors of Medicare taxes, namely doctors and medical equipment suppliers.  

I've written before about Medicaid and Medicare taxes being a subsidy for the U.S. healthcare industry.  Thanks to Bloomberg.com for providing a great chart breaking down the primary Medicare benefactors, check it out here.

The top five provider specialties haul in the bulk of the Medicare tax dollars.  The pack is led by internal medicine specialists which cost Medicare almost $9 billion in 2012.  Medicare taxpayers are supporting over 90,000 six-figure salary jobs among internal medicine doctors alone.

In addition to the run of the mill wealthy ($100,000 jobs) Medicare is supplying about 4,000 doctors with a cool million dollar annual paycheck.

Ask yourself who receives the greatest benefit from the Medicare tax?    

The Greatest Investment Return on Earth

The Interpublic Group is one of the world's largest advertising agencies and is parent company of McCann.  OpenSecrets.org tells us that Interpublic invested about $800,000 in political bribes during the 2012 U.S. election cycle.  Add another $100,000 per year in non-election campaign style bribes and they are looking at an investment of almost one million dollars.

So what does Interpublic/McCann receive for these bribes?

Would you believe $565,128,853?

From an April 2013 U.S. Army press release:

               McCann World Group Inc., New York, N.Y., was awarded a modification to a previously awarded fixed-price-award-fee contract, with a maximum value of $192,114,076 for professional marketing and advertising services in support of personnel recruitment and retention programs throughout the Army.  The cumulative total face value of this contract is now $565,128,853.   

IPG investors and executives are getting a return on their money of 565-fold in just twelve months.

The U.S. Department of Defense is providing their favored investors with the greatest investment return on Earth. 

Medicaid is a Subsidy for the Healthcare Industry

The Weekly Standard published a report from the U.S. Senate Budget Committee about "welfare" recipients.  They wrote:

Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large--and growing--chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. "Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011...

But 54 million is a highly misleading figure.  It should be clear that sick people are not the primary benefactors of medicaid.