Veterans Affairs purged thousands of medical tests to 'game' its backlog stats

By Mark Flatten

Thousands of orders for diagnostic medical tests have been purged en masse by the Department of Veterans Affairs to make it appear its decade-long backlog is being eliminated, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
About 40,000 appointments were “administratively closed” in Los Angeles, and another 13,000 were cancelled in Dallas in 2012.
That means the patients did not receive the tests or treatment that had been ordered, but rather the orders for the follow-up procedures were simply deleted from the agency’s records.
It is not known how widespread the practice is, or how many veterans hospitals have mass-purged appointment orders to clear their backlogs.
Agency officials refused an Examiner request for documents describing when the practice began or how many appointments have been canceled.
Internal VA memos say administrators at medical centers across the country were allowed to remove the appointment orders that were no longer necessary because the patient died or received medical treatment elsewhere.

Obamacare Agency Sends Out Voter Registration Cards Pre-Marked for Democrat Party

By Ashley Herzog
I’ll grant Democrats one thing: they sure have a lot of nerve. An Obamacare agency in California sent out voter registration cards already marked for Democrats.

This ploy was apparently the work of Covered California, the state-run agency responsible for implementing Obamacare. Even after ACORN and Al Franken’s Senate race, I’m still shocked by the Democratic Party’s willingness to lie and cheat.

A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state’s Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an “x” in the box next to Democratic Party.
They have lived in La Mesa for years and they have always been registered to vote Republican. Now, they are perplexed as to how the voter registration card pre-marked Democrat ended up in their mailbox.
“I’m an old guy and I never would have noticed it, except I have an accountant that notices every dot and dash on a piece of paper as a wife,” said the man who received the mailer.

What a bunch of con artists–and brazen con artists at that. I suspect organizations like Covered California have gotten away with fraud for so long, they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

Congress this week tackles Medicare payments, jobless pay and employer mandate

By Susan Ferrechio

The Senate this week will take up medicare payment legislation and a jobless benefits bill while the House votes to redefine the full time work week under Obamacare and clear a Ukraine loan and sanctions bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a test vote Monday on what lawmakers have come to call the “doc fix,” a bill that prevents a scheduled 24 percent cut in federal reimbursements to doctors who treat Medicare patients. The bill is a patch, and not a permanent fix to the Sustainable Growth Rate, which is what causes the regular cuts in pay that Congress must then undo through legislation.
Both Democrats and Republicans were working on a permanent repeal of the SGR, but with the current patch expiring on April 1, leaders in both parties decided to move ahead with a one-year fix. The move angered some lawmakers in the House, which moved the bill with a simple voice vote.
...The doc fix bill also includes a provision to delay by one year the October 2014 implementation of the massive expansion of the medical coding system.
The new system will require medical coding used by health care providers and insurers to expand from 14,000 codes to 69,000 codes. It is expected to be costly for many doctors and practices and there is a general sense that few are prepared for the changes.
The Senate will also take up legislation to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits by five months.
The legislation has already cleared a critical test hurdle and because it was co-authored by five Republicans, it is expected to pass the Senate as early as Monday.
The bill would cost nearly $10 million and would provide retroactive benefits for those who qualified for the program when it expired on Dec. 28.
The House has so far rejected the idea of taking up the bill. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said it lacked provisions to create jobs and said it was “unworkable,” because state employment officials would not be able to determine who is legitimately entitled to retroactive benefits.
Instead, the House will continue tackling perceived overreach by the Obama administration, with a vote on the Save American Workers Act, sponsored by Rep. Todd Young, R-Ind. The bill would repeal the 30 hour definition of full time employment under the Affordable Care Act. Critics of the 30-hour threshold say it has caused employers to reduce hours and lay off workers to avoid the new law's “employer mandate,” which requires that they provide health insurance for full-time employees.
...The House will also clear legislation providing $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine and authorizing President Obama to issue additional sanctions on Russia, which invaded Ukraine and has taken over Crimea.

White House week ahead: Russia waiting game, Obamacare deadline

By Brian Hughes

The White House this week will attempt to manage the fallout from hastily arranged U.S.-Russian talks on Ukraine, which produced no breakthrough in the standoff between the Obama administration and the Kremlin over the Eastern European nation.
And on the home front, the White House will make a final push to sign up more Americans for Obamacare on the final day before individuals are penalized for not obtaining health insurance -- unless consumers contend they had technical difficulty signing up.
The combination of the Ukrainian crisis and the Obamacare pitch will have enormous influence on President Obama's legacy and how effectively he is able to manage his final years in office.
...Also this week, Obama will host the Boston Red Sox at the White House Tuesday to honor their 2013 World Series championship.
On Wednesday, the president heads to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he will hold an event to call for an increase in the minimum wage. Later that day, he'll attend fundraisers in Chicago.
The president and first lady Thursday will host U.S. members and delegations from the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
And on Friday, the president welcomes Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa to the White House.

The week ahead in economics: The jobs report and long-term unemployment

By Joseph Lawler
....The BLS will report on the jobs market for March on Friday. Deutsche Bank’s projections are for 275,000 new jobs and a 6.5-percent unemployment rate, down from 6.7 percent in February.
Although February's 175,000 new payrolls number was weak relative to the average month's gains during the recovery, it was stronger than many had expected. Job growth has been weak in recent months, but it's not yet clear to what extent the slowdown was influenced by weather -- a strong March report would suggest underlying strength.
As for other events happening this week, the Senate is expected to debate both extending the long-term unemployment insurance program that expired in December and the Obama administration's proposal to lift the minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour rate to $10.10, indexed for inflation.
On Tuesday, the Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on opportunity and mobility featuring Nobel Prize-winning Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Raj Chetty, one of the authors of an influential new study showing that the rate of mobility in the U.S. hasn’t changed significantly in decades.

PK'S NOTE: NO FREAKIN' WAY. NO.

GOP establishment turns to Jeb Bush

By Thomas Lifson

The Washington Post has laid on the table a story sure to rile conservatives: Influential Republicans working to draft Jeb Bush into 2016 presidential race.

LAS VEGAS — Many of the Republican Party’s most powerful insiders and financiers have begun a behind-the-scenes campaign to draft former Florida governor Jeb Bush into the 2016 presidential race, courting him and his intimates and starting talks on fundraising strategy.

Concerned that the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal has damaged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s political standing and alarmed by the steady rise of Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), prominent donors, conservative leaders and longtime operatives say they consider Bush the GOP’s brightest hope to win back the White House.

Bush’s advisers insist that he is not actively exploring a candidacy and will not make a decision until at least the end of this year.

Ron Radosh of PJM sums it up: “The folks who gave us McCain and Romney have already made up their minds.”

68,000 criminal aliens released last year

By Rick Moran

A recent Homeland Security report reveals that 68,000 illegal aliens who were deportable due to their being convicted of a crime, were instead released back into the general population.

Breitbart:

The report, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its late Sunday evening release, reviews internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) metrics to conclude that the Obama administration released 35 percent—or 68,000—convicted criminal aliens back into the U.S. general population when they could have been deported. “The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims,” CIS’s Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, added.

By “criminal,” ICE means people who have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony that is not a traffic violation. For instance, traffic violations like Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or even vehicular manslaughter do not count toward this description of “criminal alien.” As for the definition of “alien,” ICE mostly means illegal aliens, though some are legal aliens when they are considered deportable legal aliens—which is possible for legal immigrants who have committed a serious crime, like a felony.

The documents also show ICE only deported a small fraction of the aliens they encountered overall.

“In 2013, ICE targeted only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered,” CIS’s Vaughan wrote. “Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.”

This report comes out on the heels of a report from the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) last week which found that only .08 percent of the aliens deported in 2013 were not serial immigration law violators or convicted of serious crimes.

In response to these findings from CIS that follow up on his office’s report last week, Sessions said immigration law in America has essentially ceased to exist.