Only a couple of the corruption charges brought by the FBI, not Palin, against Alaska legislators have held up to scrutiny on review or appeal. The fundamental predicate of most of the convictions is a federal statute regarding “honest services” by public officials. Problem is, honest services seem to be what a prosecutor says they are. As I wrote here contemporaneously, the FBI succeeded in making being a politician illegal. Their prosecution theory was: Company A wants X legislation/Officeholder B accepted a contribution from Company A/Officeholder B voted for the legislation desired by Company A/Therefore, Officeholder B voted for the legislation because he accepted a contribution from Company A. It is a definitional post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but they were successful in getting juries to buy it. Of course, their leaks and rumors combined with Palins fulminations had generated such a lynch mob atmosphere here that you could have convicted anyone merely of the crime of holding office. That case is currently before the USSC on the question of Constitutionally impermissible vagueness in the statute and other questions brought on behalf of Juneau Republican Representative Weyrauch. Bruce is a lawyer and still fairly young. A felony conviction for what was essentially just asking for a job will cost him his law license, so he will not go gently.

In any event, there is a Primary election in August and I’m thinking there’s going to be a day of reckoning for those who styled themselves the “un-Republicans.”

The 40 vote block of the R’s means nothing if the Dems manage to unite the other 60 against them.

The other interesting dynamic at work is that a lot of Dems know that passing this monstrosity will be either political or national suicide (if not both) and are in no hurry to pass it-except the Dem leadership that wants to press through no matter what beat downs, arm twisting and bribes it takes to kill the country.

This bill is treason in action against the nation.

You already know this, of course, Art… I wonder if we’ve all learned our lesson yet.

Getting the public re-energized on this issue at a later date will be VERY DIFFICULT. It would be be easier to undo a “public option” plan because people are really pissed about that.

The idiots running the show in DC are so disconnected from reality they wouldn’t know the difference anyway. To them it is all just words on a page.

Maybe they’ll put it in Illinois, along with the GITMO Gang.

My son has had eight surgical procedures during the past year and I’m very familiar with insurance company billing discrepancies, misunderstandings, delays, etc. The medical staff we’ve worked with have been absolutely superb. However, I could certainly pick up on their frustrations, especially when trying to diagnose a complex medical problem.

I shudder at how this health care system would work when government paper-pushers are inserted at every level…

Healthcare run by the government will be like standing in line for food stamps. It will be relegated to that status. They will quit doing scans and tests and anything else that might actually cost money.

Take 12 Valums and don’t call back. Good Night.

A pre-cert for most things follows a pretty standard procedure. Lets use a CT scan.
Step 1) I take a deep breath and get ready to waste 15 to 45 minutes of my life making a phone call to an insurance company.

Step 2) I call the insurance company and listen to the same recorded message that tells me that even though I am doing this pre-cert they resever the right not to pay for a damn thing if they find it was “unjustified”. (Actually very rarely happens)

Step 3) If/when I finally get a human, or more likely a really well written computerr program with voice recognition, I give them/it the patients information and when we agree that its the correct patient I inform the entity on the other end of the phone what procedure is and why we want to do it.

Step 4) The entity on the phone then checks this information againist a list of approved reasons and if I have given them the correct answers they give me an approval number; OR go to Step 5.

Step 5) After part of the headache subsides; I have to give the insurance company further information. Now this is the first time I might actually get to speak to another Medical Professional, usually a Nurse or Physician. If I do get to actually speak to them then we can discuss the case I can actually use the medical vocabulary that I have spent most of my life learning and if I get a reasonable person then they approve the procedure and I get an approval number.

Now sometimes we get to skip all of the above and the insurance company Medical Professional wants to speak directly to the physician for whom I work, I am sure you can imagin how much he enjoys that, and they have the same discussion I would have had as above, but they get to rub their MD’s together.

The other alternative is that they request “clinical data”, i.e. anywhere from a few pages of notes to the entire freaking chart, which is faxed to them so that they can review the data and see if the procedure is justified. Which they usually give themselves up to 72 hours to complete. Then hopefully I get an approval number.

Then I get to listen to the final disclaimer that informes me again that all the work I have just done is not a gaurentee (sp?) of payment and that if someone forgets to attach the approval number to the bill that is sent to the insurance company they will not pay and that they reasons for the procedure will be reviewed again before they pay and if found wanting the work I just did is once again wasted, cause they won’t pay.

In all honesty 85% of the time I never have to go through step 5 that 15% more than makes up for the 85%.

Now keep in mind that what i just discribed is just the interaction with the insurance company for a single CT scan on one patient, it has nothing to do witth the actual medical part of my job or the scheduling; that is just to get an ok to preform the procedure so that the insurance company will actually consider paying for it. I sitll have to do all the nursey stuff like explain it to the pt, ask them the medical questions, etc…etc.

Now that you have all of that in your mind, take a napkin and wipe the blood that is trickeling from your nose, and imagin the United States Government agency running it and making up the lists of what is acceptable.

I apologize to anyone who suffered any adverse effects from the post, like brain melt and the like.

http://www.redstate.com/dan_perrin/2009/12/15/howard-dean-kill-the-senate-bill/

Who is Bill Dupray? The first paragraph of his post at patriotroom is brilliant.