Tag Archives: fraud and waste

The War On Medical Knowledge

This administration is waging a war on all sorts of research, scholarship and expertise.

MAGA Republicanism has long been an enemy of that hated “elitist” devotion to knowledge and empiricism (remember Scott Walker’s attacks on the University of Wisconsin and the “Wisconsin Idea”? He wanted to change the description of the University’s purpose from “basic to every purpose of the (University of Wisconsin) system is the search for truth” to “meet[ing] the state’s workforce needs.” )

If there remains any doubt about MAGA’s animus toward scholarship and the search for truth, one need only look at Trump’s all-out attacks on Universities and the judiciary. The universities’ commitment to empirical fact and the courts’ commitment to “fact-based” analysis are incompatible with the madman’s desire to impose his own prejudices on the American public.

Perhaps the clearest–and most horrifying– example of Trump’s assault on knowledge and expertise has been his enthusiastic facilitation of RFK Jr.’s assault on medical research, including but not limited to cancer research.

As The Washington Post recently reported,

A federal judge might have paused President Donald Trump’s attempt to slash about $4 billion for biomedical research funding through the National Institutes of Health, but the uncertainty created by the administration is already taking an immense toll on science.

Many schools and institutions have preemptively implemented cost-cutting measures in anticipation of losing funding down the line. This will, of course, curtail all sorts of crucial research happening now on disease treatments and preventions. But it will also have reverberations for years to come — potentially affecting an entire generation of future scientists.
 
The NIH has announced cancellation of its prestigious internship program–a program that gave more than 1,000 college students the opportunity to work at the agency each summer–and the National Science Foundation has downsized its research program for undergraduates. Countless doctors and medical scientists owe their careers to these programs.
 
 
Johns Hopkins University said Thursday it had begun laying off more than 2,000 workers across the globe after the institution lost $800 million in federal grants cut by the Trump administration.

As the administration has slashed funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), perhaps no institution of higher education has been hit harder than Johns Hopkins. Among the programs targeted were a $50 million project to treat HIV while experimenting with machine learning in India and a $200 million grant to treat one of the world’s most deadly diseases in thousands of children.
 
Several other media outlets have reported on Trump Administration’s cuts to cancer and Alzheimer’s research funding, including the termination of a $5 million grant to the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University. DOGE has listed that amount among DOGE’s “savings.” The vicious cuts to medical research have included pediatric cancer research funding.
 
 
The Trump administration’s effort to reshape the federal government through Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is raising fears among public health experts, researchers and advocacy groups of a massive brain drain and dire impacts to public health. 
 
Termination letters hit the inboxes of thousands of workers across health agencies in just the past week as the administration took a sledgehammer to the federal government.  

The employees worked on projects including studying infectious diseases, medical device safety, food safety, lowering health costs and improving maternal health outcomes. All of them are now out of a job.  

“The federal government has a huge footprint. [These layoffs] will interrupt all fields of research. Every phase of our scientific endeavor has been interrupted, including that research that is essential for our national security,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.  

MAGA’s Christian Nationalists evidently want to take us back to the days when “good Christians” like Cotton Mather understood diseases like smallpox to be evidence of God’s displeasure….

To believe the Trump/Musk assault is on “fraud and waste” would require us to re-define those terms. “Waste” in Musk jargon is defined as any program with which he disagrees. The fact that Congress chose to establish a program or pursue a goal is entirely beside the point, as is that pesky Constitutional provision vesting Congress–not DOGE– with exclusive authority over fiscal matters.

If there is one thing that distinguishes MAGA and its White Christian Nationalists from the rest of us, it is a seething resentment of those who differ, and especially those they consider “elitists”–defined not as people with money, (they  worship oligarchs, no matter how obviously ignorant) but people with knowledge and expertise. 

They’re thrilled with Trump’s destruction of our government, and they evidently don’t worry that they’ll get cancer…or measles.

 
 
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Fraud and Waste

Candidates for office are notorious for promising to cut taxes and claiming that they will pay for them by reducing “fraud and waste.” Usually, this is bullshit; especially at the local level. Americans love to believe bloat exists in service delivery, but usually, the only way to pay for tax cuts is by eliminating services.

That said, a recent Congressional report has identified one way to save the federal government money by curtailing an activity that is actively harmful: funding tuition at for-profit schools of “higher education.” (Note quotes here.)

The Committee that issued the report was headed by Senator Tom Harkin. It hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. The report documents aggressive recruiting, exorbitant tuition, abysmal student outcomes, regulatory evasion, and taxpayer dollars pocketed as profit.

According to the summary of findings published by the New York Times, students at for-profit colleges are charged, on average, four times as much tuition as students at public universities, and eighty percent of that comes from American taxpayers. Furthermore, according to the blog Political Animal, “these colleges do an exceptionally crappy job of educating students.”

Retention rates are horrendous: the majority of enrollees, according to the Times, leave without a degree, but even those who earn a credential usually discover it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. And–perhaps the most telling statistic from a taxpayer’s point of view– students at for-profit colleges make up 13% of the country’s college students, but account for 47% of defaults on student loans.

Think about that next time you see one of those gauzy–and expensive–commercials for a college you never heard of.

The Obama Administration has tried to change the student loan system so that tax dollars cannot be used at most of these schools, but the effort–like so many others–has been met with fierce lobbying and obstruction. You might think that all of those politicians running for office on a platform of reducing fraud and waste would applaud this recommendation. After all, refusing to fund con artists would actually protect those who are currently getting ripped off, as well as saving tax dollars.

You’d think this would be a no-brainer, one of those rare “win-win” situations. But you’d be wrong.

And we wonder why Congress has a 17% approval rating. (Maybe the 17% attended for-profit colleges.)

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