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I've followed DOGE closely and haven't heard anything that would indicate they were even trying to reduce unnecessary medicare spending. Where I have heard that

I've followed DOGE closely and haven't heard anything that would indicate they were even trying to reduce unnecessary medicare spending. Where I have heard that they've tried to touch healthcare spending, they've made a huge mess. For instance, they cancelled a lot of support contracts at the VA, but many of those contracts did necessary things, like maintaining complex machinery. If you read ProPublica's article on DOGE at the VA, it's pretty clear that this was done incredibly quickly by a guy with zero healthcare knowledge using a minimal prompt and wasn't even directing the AI to read the most important parts of the contract. https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-veterans-affairs-ai-contracts-health-care https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-veterans-affai...

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
There seems to be some indication that they hired some incompetent people and/or were prohibited from cutting some of the things that ought to be cut. And I don't think there is any question that the deadline they set for themselves was unrealistically aggressive. Which means we need someone to go back and do it properly, not that it doesn't need to be done.
- apical_dendrite 11mo ago
  I think everyone would agree that we should reduce fraud and waste in healthcare spending. I don't think DOGE was making a serious attempt to do that.
- __loam 11mo ago
  What Doge was trying to do cannot be done legally.
  - cogman10 11mo ago
    Sure it can, by the atorneys general. A core part of their job is identifying, stopping, and prosecuting fraud and waste spending in the government. Doge was never legal, but there were agencies that had the statutory power to do what doge wanted. However, they also could investigate things like emoluments violations which is precisely why they were some of the first to be fired.

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago

There seems to be some indication that they hired some incompetent people and/or were prohibited from cutting some of the things that ought to be cut. And I don't think there is any question that the deadline they set for themselves was unrealistically aggressive. Which means we need someone to go back and do it properly, not that it doesn't need to be done.

apical_dendrite 11mo ago
I think everyone would agree that we should reduce fraud and waste in healthcare spending. I don't think DOGE was making a serious attempt to do that.
__loam 11mo ago
What Doge was trying to do cannot be done legally.
- cogman10 11mo ago
  Sure it can, by the atorneys general. A core part of their job is identifying, stopping, and prosecuting fraud and waste spending in the government. Doge was never legal, but there were agencies that had the statutory power to do what doge wanted. However, they also could investigate things like emoluments violations which is precisely why they were some of the first to be fired.