Walker Lame Duck Legacy costing taxpayers, twisting Government into one party pretzel!

So, this is "fiscally conservative" policy GOP voters just can't get enough of...really?

"Small government" conservatives, including business owners, rural farmers, and think tank freeloaders, actually love the convoluted multi-tentacled regulations Scott Walker, Robin Vos, and Scott Fitzgerald created stripping the Attorney Generals office of their power. It will now cost taxpayer money to maneuver through a politically motivated maze creating more litigation.

Kaul

JS: The episode is the latest in a saga of confusion for lawmakers as they try to navigate new laws that give the Legislature more power over litigation handled by AG Josh Kaul. Lawmakers and Kaul can't agree on how to share sensitive legal information, and more than a dozen lawsuits involving millions of dollars languish as the dispute continues. 

With the likely loss of Wisconsin settlement money from ongoing lawsuits, costing the state millions, where are all those "fiscally conservative" voters now? 

Here's what "streamlining" government bureaucracy looks like, according to Wisconsin Republican politicians, point by mind-boggling point. Remember, this was once the AG's job, resulting in no news headlines, no controversy:

1. Republican leaders of the Legislature's finance committee hired an attorney at taxpayer expense, $290 an hour, Thursday to sign a secrecy agreement in an effort to end a standoff with Attorney General Josh Kaul ... (to) resolve the dispute triggered by new laws requiring the Democratic attorney general to get legislators' permission to settle lawsuits. 

2. Legal analysis by the head of the Legislature's research bureau suggested only a new law could require lawmakers to keep such information private. And the nondisclosure agreement proposed by the GOP leaders wouldn't apply to any of the committee's members anyway because none of them signed it individually. 

3. Lawmakers this week refused to sign such agreements requested by Kaul, who said he needed assurances of confidentiality to avoid consequences for taxpayers as he seeks to resolve litigation involving the state. 

4. Darling and Nygren signed a contract with Andrew Phillips of the Milwaukee law firm von Briesen that says the nondisclosure agreement binds the committee and its members, even though Phillips is the only person who signed it. 

5. "They can't do that," said Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach. "This attorney they've hired does not represent the views of us.""This is the first I'm hearing about it," Democratic Rep. Evan Goyke said. They said they were baffled by the notion that an attorney they didn't know they had could contend he had the power to limit what they could tell the public. 

6. Rick Champagne, the director of the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, wrote in a memo that a confidentiality agreement signed by an attorney did not apply to individual lawmakers.

"I cannot find any authority that would require a member of the Legislature who serves on a committee to keep confidential any information delivered in closed session unless the information was required by state or federal law to be kept confidential or was information that the member had agreed to keep confidential under a confidentiality agreement signed by the member."  

Hanging in the balance; millions of dollars the state could use, especially against the opioid crisis affecting a lot of rural area Republican voters:

The action comes a day after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported more than a dozen lawsuits involving state taxpayers are languishing because the Wisconsin politicians can't agree on how to resolve them under the new Republican law that curbs the power of the Democratic attorney general. The impasse comes as billions of dollars are on the table for states — including Wisconsin — suing over the opioid crisis.

A proposed deal to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits against OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma over the company's role in the nation's opioid crisis was pushed back Thursday just as Kaul told lawmakers the tight timeline to resolve the latest dispute was no longer in place. Purdue Pharma is facing pushback from some attorneys general who say the proposed settlement of up to $12 billion isn't enough, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Who can forget this taxpayer paid for fiasco...actual government censorship. Who's silencing political speech again?

Attorneys for a liberal group will be paid $200,000 by taxpayers because Republican lawmakers blocked the group on Twitter. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that state officials agreed Thursday to pay the legal bills for One Wisconsin Now's attorneys. A federal judge ruled in January that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Rep. John Nygren, both Republicans, had infringed on the group's First Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge William Conley concluded the three lawmakers had acted unconstitutionally by blocking the group on Twitter "because of its prior speech or identity."

New Doctors back Single-Payer, and Medicaid Expansion lowers cost for Diabetes and treats Opioid Abuse.

Those baby boomer kids learned a life lesson seeing their parents deal with expensive health care issues as they grew up, and are now poised to change things. 

The days of stable long-term jobs and comprehensive affordable employer-provided health care insurance are gone. Thankfully, the next generation of doctors are now on the front line advocating some kind of single-payer system, in direct contradiction to the American Medical Association's 80 opposition:  

Kaiser Health: When the American Medical Association met in Chicago this June, its medical student caucus seized an opportunity for change. Though they had tried for years to drop its decades-long opposition to single-payer health care, this was the first time it got a full hearing. The debate grew heated — older physicians warned their pay would decrease, calling younger advocates naïve to single-payer’s consequences. But this time, by the meeting’s end, the AMA’s older members had agreed to at least study the possibility of changing its stance.

“We believe health care is a human right, maybe more so than past generations,” said Dr. Brad Zehr, a 29-year-old pathology resident at Ohio State University, who was part of the debate. “There’s a generational shift happening, where we see universal health care as a requirement.”

Democrats on Board with single-payer, Medicare-for-all or option to buy into the Medicare program: The only thing I can add to this is a plea for someone to come up with what the added tax would look like, and the actual savings Americans will see ditching those skyrocketing monthly insurance premiums:

At least 70 House Democrats have signed on to the new “Medicare-for-all” caucus.

Fact: Medicaid Expansion Saves Money,  Fights Diabetes and Opioid Epidemic, so where's Scott Walker? 
As a career politician, Walker has never had to live in the real world. His pursuit of a purely ideological agenda shoved reality aside in Wisconsin, leaving the deadly opioid epidemic to grow and diabetes treatments to fall costing everyone more money as a result:

California Healthline: Low-income people with diabetes are better able to afford their medications and manage their disease in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and saves public money (a $6,394 reduction in health care costs in 2017 dollars), a new Health Affairs study suggests. More than 114 million adults in the U.S. have diabetes or prediabetes, making the disease one of the country’s most formidable health challenges.

The study found a roughly 40 percent increase in the number of prescriptions filled for diabetes drugs in Medicaid programs (significantly reduced out-of-pocket spending for insulin) of the 30 states that expanded eligibility in 2014 and 2015 … states that didn’t embrace expansion saw no notable increase ... more than 2 million people who live in non-participating states would have qualified for Medicaid.

That’s your argument? Profit, profit, profit? Those poor old monopolistic drug companies that get so much help from the National Institute of Health can’t stop whining, and free market institutes keep proving just how bad capitalist abuses are to the average American:

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Medicaid pays a fraction of a drug’s list price, so pharmaceutical companies may hike prices for everyone if they don’t feel they’re being compensated fairly. That, in turn, could drive up everyone’s premium costs or lead those with private insurance to pay more out-of-pocket. “As prices rise, fewer people will be able to afford diabetic medications.”

More Doctors taking Medicaid Patients Too: Paul Ryan's fear mongering...wrong:

Health Affairs (no link-my email newsletter): New research, led by Hannah T. Neprash, a professor of health policy at the University of Minnesota, concludes that doctors are not taking fewer Medicaid patients at the same time the program is expanding under Obamacare ... chose to expand ... from 10.2 percent in 2013 to 13.6 percent in 2015. In non-expansion states, there was no notable difference either way, according to the study. 

Medicaid Helps reduce and treat Opioid addiction but Work Requirements Block Access: 

The same has been found in other studies of major public health issues, like opioid abuse, which disproportionately affects low-income Americans. A study published last month in the Journal of Health Economics found admission to treatment facilities increased 18 percent in expansion states, largely due to a 113 percent increase in admissions for opioid treatment by Medicaid beneficiaries.

Adding eligibility requirements creates additional barriers to Medicaid coverage for those patients dealing with chronic health issues, whereas expansion of Medicaid helps more people address those conditions before they get worse — and even more costly. Let's not forget that additional medical costs, whatever they may be, may fall on the taxpayer.

Legalized Marijuana reduces Opioid Addiction Rates and Government Spending!!!

It's both frustrating and amusing to watch Republicans cut every business tax they can find and then offer taxpayer handouts on top of that. And yet, what Republicans ideologically steer clear of is one of the biggest drags on business; employer health insurance. If they really wanted to help business, they could pass a nationwide all-payer system that takes insurance off their backs completely.

Business Paying More for Opioid epidemic, which isn't doing anything to help control the rising cost of insurance. It'll cost large employers $2.6 billion a year;

On average, inpatient and outpatient treatment for opioid addiction and overdose added about $26 per person to the annual cost of health benefits coverage for large employers in 2016, up from about $3 in 2004.

Marijuana Reduces Opioid Addiction Rate: Wrong way Republicans are also against legalizing marijuana because...well, Dragnet 67's Joe Friday said so. It was laughably wrong then and still is:



Republicans again want to just add to the problem:

Making medical and recreational marijuana available may be one way to help fight the opioid epidemic. Two new studies published yesterday found availability of marijuana is linked with lower rates of opioid prescription rates, our colleague Christopher Ingraham reports.

The first study found the passage of medical and recreational marijuana laws led to reductions in Medicaid opiate prescription rates of 5.88 percent and 6.38 percent, respectively.

That's a huge saving, and yet Republicans are again willing to waste lots of money staying true to their backward principles:

The Trump administration has taken an adversarial stance toward states that have legalized marijuana in some fashion. The Justice Department rescinded an Obama-era policy of noninterference for state-legal marijuana operations, and the attorney general has expressed an interest in prosecuting medical marijuana providers.

Overspending is not the issue for Republicans. They've got outdated cliches to cling to:

President Trump called on researchers to “come up with a painkiller that’s not so addictive.” The latest studies suggest that such a painkiller already exists — it is called marijuana, and it is legal for medical use in 29 states and for recreational use in 9 states plus the District.

The second study found that at the state level, medical marijuana laws were connected to an 8.5 percent drop in the number of daily opioid doses filled under Medicare Part D, a 14.4 percent reduction for states with medical marijuana dispensaries and a 6.9 percent drop in states that allowed pot cultivation at home. That’s compared with states that don’t have medical marijuana laws.

“The studies are the latest in a long line of research showing that marijuana availability is associated with reductions in opiate use and misuse,” Christopher writes. The first study, by Hefei Wen of the University of Kentucky and Jason Hockenberry of Emory University, is significant for finding a link between recreational marijuana and opiate use, as most previous research has focused on medical marijuana.

"There is widespread agreement among doctors and public-health experts that marijuana is effective at treating chronic pain," Christopher writes. “These findings suggest that medical and adult-use marijuana laws have the potential to reduce opioid prescribing for Medicaid enrollees, a segment of population with disproportionately high risk for chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and opioid overdose.”

Dumb Ron Johnson's Homeland Security Opioid Fiasco Fantasy.

There's a reason why I call him, Dumb Ron Johnson. This is just another example.

click here

The fantasy was that Medicaid expansion is to blame for the opioid crisis in the United States. The ringmaster was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Johnson has been flogging this notion for the better part of a year, or longer, despite the utter lack of evidence that it’s true — and plenty of evidence that the opposite is true.

Just imagine if the U.S., or for that matter any other country in the world, had universal health care. The horror, where everyone is on opioids!!! Oh, other countries have universal care and they don't have the same problem as the U.S? That's our Dumb Ron Johnson.

From NPR, I caught this audio clip of Johnson's embarrassing freak out:



Johnson even put out a Homeland Security report listing coincidences and pure mumbo-jumbo all on official paper shown above with link.

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times had a field day with Johnson's lunacy, with graphs and facts. Maybe Hiltzik should be in charge of Homeland Security:

The witnesses included one anti-Medicaid ideologue, two local prosecutors who testified that they’ve seen a lot of addicts in their work and lots of them seem to be on Medicaid, and two experts who, tactlessly, pointed out that the causes of the opioid epidemic are many and complex, that it started years before Medicaid expansion, and that it involves patients and doctors in Medicare and private insurance as well as the uninsured. As Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University told Johnson’s committee, this was the product in part of the drug industry’s “brilliant, multifaceted marketing campaign that changed the culture of opioid prescribing.”

The Republican campaign against Medicaid could only make the opioid crisis worse. That’s because Medicaid pays for a huge proportion of opioid treatments, covering fully one-third of those with addiction problems.

Here are the charts...

A chart reproduced from a report he released Wednesday pinning the crisis on Medicaid fraud paired five Medicaid expansion states with neighboring non-expansion states, purporting to show much higher increases in opioid deaths in the expansion states from 2013 to 2015. Johnson didn’t seem to notice that the 55% increase in Maine, one of his non-expansion states, actually exceeded the increase in three of his expansion states — Ohio (41%), Maryland (44%) and West Virginia (27%).