This started as a comment on a comment, on Eric’s post about HR-3962.
You forgot, C Ella, to mention subsidies to Big Pharma like penis pumps (which used to be called “sex toys”) Cialis and Viagra (which can be gotten on Medicare and Medicaid, but Not CONDOMS because they’re birth control, IUDs and The Pill same reason.)
Celebrex (which is just a split-molecule away from being generic ibuprofen, at a dollar a bottle, rather than the $5 per pill that Celebrex costs).

There’s also the very efficient Denial of Service “watchdogs” who make sure anybody who gets home health care (Which is actually a Money Saver) is denied as much care as possible and has to pass an electron-microscope inspection of every detail of his life and work history before even becoming eligible for Medical Assistance.

Without which anybody who doesn’t have Insurance is stuck with going to the Emergency Room for chronic conditions, at $1000 + per visit, which has to be written off in most cases, rather than have a visiting nurse at $500-800 per month and clinic visits at about $75 per visit.

It’s a case of being TOO stingy, not one of being too Liberal.

Notice I said “stingy” instead of “conservative” because the current stingy system conserves nothing and increases waste.

The system of electronic automated approvals of expenditures  is a case in point. It costs less to run one computer at $20 a day than run 10 humans at $75 a day apiece. Then you get million dollar apiece chunks of Fraud.

Since the Medicare/Medicaid programs were enacted by Congress, their bureaucracies were handed over to people who don’t believe that ANYBODY deserves assistance. “Former” insurance company executives who are about as “former” as Ross Perot is the “former” boss of EDS and Richard Cheney is the “former” boss of Daddy Warbucks Inc… meaning Halliburton.

Would people who screamed that the Insurance companies lost money because of Medicare/caid REALLY do an honest job of getting the badly needed assistance to everybody who qualifies?

I bet they wouldn’t, Especially since most of these “Former” executives are “current” shareholders. They believe their shares are worth less money because of people getting assistance, what incentive do they have for actually granting that assistance?

The Real “fraud” involved in these programs is from people who believe that the poor are being helped Too Much, and scream loudly at their Tea Parties about patients “Fraudulently” actually getting necessary health care.

Also when they tell lies like how concerned they are  about older folks getting their Medicare. What makes that a truly outrageous LIE is that the leaders of the Tea Party (which is supposedly and Allegedly “grass roots” even though it’s organized by some of the biggest Piggs in the Repigglican party, like Gingrich)(Financed by the RNC, too) fought against every aspect of Medicare in the first place. Including Ronald Reagan protesting the very institution of Medicare, saying it was “the end of Liberty in America” Does that not sound very familiar?

Of course, them having total control of the economy for the past 30+ years and cutting the living hell out of all those regulations and red tape and other “stumbling blocks” that stymied the “free” Market couldn’t possibly have contributed in any way to crashing the Economy.

Which has dumped out even more PEOPLE onto the trash-pile of the American Dream. PEOPLE who lost their jobs and now their insurance, and thus won’t be able to get Health Care under the Republican Tea-Party Plan.