The Big Government Contracts Doge Hasn't Touched | Hacker News Reader

The Big Government Contracts Doge Hasn't Touched

nytimes.com

43 pointsaatish17 comments

Anil Dash - understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture

https://www.anildash.com//2025/01/04/DOGE-procurement-captur...

Medicare fraud is conservatively in the $16 billion+ per year range[1] and a lot of it is easily detectable with data the government already has.

Two things about this type of fraud though:

1. Detection would require making USG a better place to work for technically savvy people, with things like "budgets" and "not getting publicly humiliated by the world's richest man"

2. It's committed by men in suits, so enforcement would require going after the types of people that in reality, Trump & co prefer to pardon... for committing exactly this type of fraud [2]...

So, cutting life-saving aid, cancer research, and healthcare benefits it is!

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/how-health-insurers-ra...

[2]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/health-care-f...

And it is specifically their buddies in the suits, like Rick Scott.

>Medicare fraud is conservatively in the $16 billion+ per year range[1] and a lot of it is easily detectable with data the government already has.

The fraud and waste are a lot more than that. Did you know you can buy FOOD with Medicare? Did you know that doctors are concocting excuses out the wazoo to rack up more visits and more prescriptions? My mom was put on like 4 medications for the same thing, and bluffed into many tests and even emergency procedures she didn't need by an unscrupulous doctor. How the hell are we going to reign in that fraud without denying benefits to people who need them? We could also talk about the insane 3rd party supplemental insurance schemes, the excessive costs of individual items, the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are paying for Ozempic at $1000 per month, 1% of the budget going to dialysis patients who are delivered to routine appointments by ambulance, probably a lot of other crap.

People, including the MSM apparently, continue to act as if this is about efficiency and waste. It's clearly not; it's about blowing up agencies and programs that Trump, Musk, and the P2025 gang don't like. And ensuring a further erosion of rights for most of us, with that power (and money) further consolidating into the bank accounts of a select few.

It's about destroying the patronage systems which benefited the Democrats

The perfect plan: We're going to create rampant patronage to destroy the patronage system that we have not been able to produce any evidence of!

Welcome back to the 1800s:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_Un...

That second link really hits home, ouch.

> It's about destroying the patronage systems which benefited the Democrats

How did it benefit Democrats?

Don’t forget about the national emergency we’re having later this year.

From the article: > “I don’t think the large defense contractors will be immune from cuts and contract terminations for long,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who noted that the sensitive nature of some defense contract details may require a different approach to cuts. “The defense industry is bracing for budget cuts.”

I mean... what point are they actually trying to make? The government has cut big defense spending contracts yet, and that's bad, but they're planning on it soon, so we have to complain now before we miss our window?

Doesn't this also include "military aid" that we give to countries like Israel?

Fix the Sentinel program. Every single cut DOGE has enacted to date would be swamped tenfold by just figuring out how to un-fuck the Sentinel program. And frankly unlike all the other shit, that would actually plausibly be within Elon's true wheelhouse.

Assuming this refers neither to a missile program that existed in the 70s, nor a plan to build giant robots to combat superheroes, so got any details?

It's the upcoming Minuteman missile replacement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-35_Sentinel

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