{"id":1447,"date":"2004-03-22T15:37:21","date_gmt":"2004-03-22T20:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1447.html"},"modified":"2004-03-22T15:37:21","modified_gmt":"2004-03-22T20:37:21","slug":"something-still-doesnt-add-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/something-still-doesnt-add-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Something still doesn’t add up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to follow up for a moment on the last post about the Medicare cost cover-up, there’s one other thing that doesn’t make sense to me.<\/p>\n

Doug Badger, Bush’s senior health policy adviser, seems anxious to paint himself as completely out of the loop when Scully and Foster were disagreeing about what to do with the actuary’s cost estimates on Bush’s Medicare bill.<\/p>\n

He told the Washington Post<\/a> that he “wasn’t aware” of the discussions between HHS and the White House legislative staff about Foster’s data. He said to the best of his “knowledge and recollection,” he didn’t participate in discussions about whether to share the accurate information. He said he had no idea that Scully had threatened to fire Foster if he shared the data with Congress.<\/p>\n

Fine. To hear Badger tell it, he was completely uninformed and unaware of the events swirling around him about the legislation he was supposed to be championing.<\/p>\n

But then there was this nugget at the end of a New York Times article<\/a> over the weekend:<\/p>\n

Trent D. Duffy, a White House spokesman…acknowledged that the actuary’s cost estimates had been sent to White House officials, including Doug Badger, a special assistant to President Bush who negotiated with Congress on the Medicare bill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s unclear in the NYT article is when<\/i> the White House received Foster’s cost estimates.
\n
\nEither Duffy meant the data had been sent over fairly recently (after reports of a cover-up surfaced) or during congressional consideration of the legislation (during the actual cover-up). Both options raise some troubling issues.<\/p>\n

If the White House received the data months ago, then Badger and others knew the $400 billion figure was untrue but continued to cite it anyway. In other words, they were lying to everyone.<\/p>\n

If the White House didn’t receive the data until, say, last week, then why didn’t Badger and others get the information sooner? This is, after all, the White House<\/i> hoping to pass its own Medicare bill<\/i>. Seems like they’d want reliable info on how much their plan was going to cost.<\/p>\n

It sounds to me like the White House was either incompetent or dishonest. Maybe some enterprising political reporter can ask Scott McClellan to pick which one is accurate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to follow up for a moment on the last post about the Medicare cost cover-up, there’s one other thing that doesn’t make sense to me. Doug Badger, Bush’s senior health policy adviser, seems anxious to paint himself as completely out of the loop when Scully and Foster were disagreeing about what to do with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}