May 7, 2022. Happy 100th birthday, dad! Why in GD? Because this is about journalism.

[DFW]

12. Hey, I DID write a novel!! Several here on DU have read it, including Thom Hartmann

I only know Hartmann read it because he talked about it on his show. He did NOT seek me out to tell me about it. But he said he liked it, so you can take that for what it's worth.

My Dad was the quiet star. He knew EVERYBODY in Washington. Pancreatic cancer felled him 22 years ago, but one day on July 2000, as he was wasting away, he noticed that someone has proposed a money-saving (for the government) modification to medicare: that it would only cover 85% of outpatient care instead of the 95% it was at the time. As someone who was receiving a LOT of outpatient care at the time (chemo, etc.), he immediately realized the fallacy of the proposal. Weak though he was, he set up a conference call between Senator Moynihan of New York and the White House (he still the clout to do that), and explained to everybody that if they lowered the coverage for outpatient care, all the people who were taking advantage of the 95% outpatient coverage would immediately go to inpatient care, and cost the Medicare program a fortune more than they would save by reducing the outpatient care. Both Moynihan and the White House saw his point right away, and the proposal was immediately dropped. Medicare outpatients were spared the paperwork nightmare, and the government saved billions. No one outside Moynihan's office or the White House ever mentioned it, but it was my dad who saved a forest of trees from getting turned into the paperwork nightmare that would have caused.