The stink of the Medifraud is rising and spreading.
The NYTwits and the WASHPs have acknowledged it. How
long can AnythingButSee, SeeBS, NotBeSeen and
SeeNotNews ignore it?
Washington Post: Richard S. Foster, the government's
chief analyst of Medicare costs who was threatened
with firing last year if he disclosed too much
information to Congress, said last night that he
believes the White House participated in the decision
to withhold analyses that Medicare legislation
President Bush sought would be far more expensive than
lawmakers knew.
Cleanse the White House of the Bush Cabal and Its
Corrupt Cronies, Overthrow the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6339-2004Mar18?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Foster: White House Had Role In Withholding Medicare Data HHS Actuary Feels Bush Aide Put Hold on Medicare Data
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A02
Richard S. Foster, the government's chief analyst of
Medicare costs who was threatened with firing last
year if he disclosed too much information to Congress,
said last night that he believes the White House
participated in the decision to withhold analyses that
Medicare legislation President Bush sought would be
far more expensive than lawmakers knew.
Foster has said publicly in recent days that he was
warned repeatedly by his former boss, Thomas A.
Scully, the Medicare administrator for three years,
that he would be dismissed if he replied directly to
legislative requests for information about
prescription drug bills pending in Congress. In an
interview last night, Foster went further, saying that
he understood Scully to be acting at times on White
House instructions, probably coming from Bush's senior
health policy adviser.
Foster said that he did not have concrete proof of a
White House role, but that his inference was based on
the nature of several conversations he had with Scully
over data that Congress had asked for and that Foster
wanted to release. "I just remember Tom being upset,
saying he was caught in the middle. It was like he was
getting dumped on," Foster said.
Foster added that he believed, but did not know for
certain, that Scully had been referring to Doug
Badger, the senior health policy analyst. He said that
he concluded that Badger probably was involved because
he was the White House official most steeped in the
administration's negotiations with Congress over
Medicare legislation enacted late last year and
because Badger was intimately familiar with the
analyses his office produced.
The account by Foster, a longtime civil servant who
has been the Medicare program's chief actuary for nine
years, diverges sharply from the explanations of why
cost estimates were withheld that were given this week
by White House spokesmen and Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. They suggested that
Scully, who left for jobs with law and investment
firms four months ago, had acted unilaterally and that
he was chastised by his superiors when they learned of
the blocked information and the threat.
Two days ago, Thompson told reporters: "Tom Scully was
running this. Tom Scully was making those decisions."
Thompson said the administration did not have final
cost estimates until late December predicting that the
law would cost $534 billion over 10 years, $139
billion more than the Congressional Budget Office's
prediction. Foster has said his own analyses as early
as last spring showed that the legislation's cost
would exceed $500 billion.
Last night, White House deputy press secretary Trent
Duffy said, "It is my understanding that Mr. Badger
did not in any way ask anyone to withhold information
from Congress or pressure anyone to do the same."
Duffy said he asked Badger this week whether he had
done so and that Badger replied he had not. Duffy said
that Badger was traveling last night and was
unreachable to comment. Calls to his home were not
returned.
Foster suggested the White House had been involved as
new details emerged of the manner in which he had been
threatened. The actuary released an e-mail, dated last
June 20, from Scully's top assistant at the time
regarding one GOP request and two Democratic requests
for information about the impact of provisions of the
Medicare bill on which the House would vote a week
later.
In a bold-faced section of the three-paragraph note --
reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal --
Scully's assistant, Jeffrey Flick, instructed Foster
to answer the Republican's question but warned him not
to disclose answers to the Democratic queries "with
anyone else until Tom Scully explicitly talks with you
-- authorizing release of information. The
consequences for insubordination are extremely
severe."
The warning came in response to an e-mail Foster had
sent to Scully that same Friday afternoon, 22 minutes
earlier, in which he said the three questions "strike
me as straightforward requests for technical
information that would be useful in assessing drug and
competition provisions in the House reform package."
Foster offered in that e-mail to show Scully his
proposed replies in advance.
Flick, who now oversees the Medicare agency's regional
office in San Francisco, did not return several phone
calls.
Scully was out of town and did not respond to efforts
to reach him via e-mail last night. He said in an
interview this week that he and Foster had disagreed
over how helpful an executive branch employee needed
to be to Congress. He called it "a separation of
powers issue."
In 1997 budget legislation, Congress sought
unsuccessfully to require the Medicare actuary to
respond to all of its requests. Such language was
included in a conference report on the bill but does
not carry the force of law.
Foster said that the e-mail was the only instance in
which he had been explicitly threatened in writing,
but that "there were other instances in which Tom in
an e-mail or just over the phone would clearly be
unhappy and would say less formally something to the
effect, 'If you want to work for the Ways and Means
Committee, I can arrange that.' "
The actuary said that in June 2001, shortly after
Scully arrived, he directed Foster to send weekly
reports of any requests for information he had
received from Capitol Hill or elsewhere in the
administration.
Congressional Democrats yesterday called for the
General Accounting Office to investigate the episode.
Thompson announced Tuesday he had ordered HHS's
inspector general to conduct an inquiry.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company