Posted on 07/11/2005 7:08:16 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
On Saturday, I received the news that former Tennessee governor, Don Suncquist, had been named by the Bush admimistration to LEAD an avisory committee to reform Medicaid (story here> and my first reaction was pretty much the same as Bob Tuke, chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, "This must be a joke". It is rare that I agree with anything that the DNC says, but this is one of those rare occassions.
For those of you not familiar with the disgraced former governor, here are a few of the headlines in the local Tennessean newspaper, Judge says Sundquist was reason for federal probe , Ganier fails to get judge to suppress mention of his ties to Sundquist. And those are just in the last WEEK!
Sundquist easily won his second term in office in 1998 running on a solid "no state income tax" platform, yet literally within hours of taking his oath of affirmation, announced his plans to push for a state income tax. To do this, he basically sold out to the Tennessee Democrat Party and allowed them to add up to 10% to the state budget EVERY YEAR in order to create a "crisis" is which the only "solution" would be to ram an income tax down the throats of the citizens of Tennessee. The primary vehicle to do this was the highly touted and equally unpopular Tenncare program. For those of you unfamiliar with it, imagine Hillarycare on a statewide basis. Tenncare was supposed to "save" money but every year that it has existed, it has taken up a larger and larger share of the state budget until now it costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.6 BILLION per year in a state with a budget of about S22.5 billion. It takes up more of the budget than roads, schools, and the salaries of the state employees COMBINED. It has been and continues to be an absolute disaster and Don Sundquist was driving that disaster for 8 full years. For this act Don Sundquist was named RINO of the Year.
Fortunately, the good people of Tennessee were up to the challenge of a sellout governor and rallied day after day, yelling in protest for hour after hour until the state income tax beast was driven back under the rock from which it came.
And now we get to Sundquists PERSONAL problems. Sundquist seems to have an affinity for no-bid contracts to political cronies. Several people with whom Sundquist granted royal favor upon are now in jail for improperly accepting money from the government. Sundquist himself is under investigation for fraud in granting these favors and the possibility of him being indicted is not out of the picture.
The Democrats in Tennesse are delighted at this blunder and echo my sentiments. Sen. Doug Jackson (D) said, "It's the blind leading the blind." Michele Johnson, an attorney with the Tennessee Justice Center said, "The thousands of people who are losing TennCare coverage this year are a legacy of bad decisions made during Sundquist's eight years in office," which is partially correct. The bad decisions that Sundquist made about Tenncare were basically allowing ANYBODY to get on the program with absolutely no oversight on costs.
Mr. President, did you even consult with ANYONE who actually KNEW what happened with Tenncare in Tennesse under Sundquist? Did you not ask Senators Frist or Alexander or Representative Marsha Blackburn (who was one of the leaders against the state income tax) what they thought about Sundquist?
Mr. President, is THIS the kind of person you REALLY w ant to head up a committee to "reform" Medicaid?
More importantly, is this the kind of judgement we can expect when you pick replacements for the Supreme Court?
If it is, God save us all because only God can save us from this sort of folly.
Personally, I'm not sure it's a bad idea to have an idiot in charge of "fixing" medicaid. Any "fix" is bound to cost money. I would much rather have an idiot arguing for more money than an astute politician.
The problem is that he is smooth and reasonable sounding when appealing for more funds.
We all know the answer, some just hate to admit it.
Politics over all else. Apparently this guy is connected and owed a favor. Here it is. And what do we get?
BOHICA
I don't really care....it isn't like this is medicare reform, just medicaid.
Yes, it is important. But, Bush can just ignore the recommendations. As for why he chose this guy, I don't know what he was thinking.
But, everybody screws up with picks sometimes. He hasn't screwed up in judges.
Sort of comparable. Medicaid is supposed to cover the people who MUST have medical care yet are destitute. However, it has the problems that any large government bureaucracy has, inefficiency, waste, fraud, etc.
Oh. Sounds like your average con-man.
He didn't fool the people of Tennessee for a minute.
It certainly looks like the wheels are coming off this presidency. Nothing seems to be going right and most of the time that the President is in town it's so quiet you can hear crickets chirping...except on the Rat side where they are whining at 200 decibels about everything. It looks like they are the ones in charge of the agenda. This situation better improve fast or the '06 congressional elections look iffy.
We'll end up with more provisions for medical care for crimaliens.
Perhaps we'll be building hospitals across the sooon to be erased borders, so the wetbacks don't have to trouble themselves crossing the Rio grande to sponge off the American taxpayers, who are soon to be subjects of the North American Community.
Medicare is another way for the government to remove market pressure from the health care industry. That lets them jack up wages and prices, avert competition from cheaper foreign born doctors, avert antitrust regulations, and avoid accountability.
The good news is that it is not mandatory for old people to pay using medicare, and so this generation of old folks need less medical care. Not what the doctors wanted, but they want to extend benefits to extend to plastic surgery. Imagine, 70 year olds who look like thin skinned taunt 16year olds.
Oh, viagra is covered by medicare, so divorce the old bag and feel good about starting a new family while on the dole.
He fooled the "average" Tennessean enough to win two elections. There were a lot of surprised people when he went so lib in his second term. I'm glad he did not fool you.
No he is not!!!!!!!! The people of Tennessee did not put up one minute with Taxquist ranting about needing more money in the form of state income tax.
It was the alternative that made me vote for Sunquist. I wasn't fooled for a minute.
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