 by Wendell Potter |
COMMENTARY
As someone who worked nearly two decades as a health insurance executive, I know that Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running-mate is a dream come true for my former colleagues—and a potential nightmare for just about everyone else in America under the age of 55.
For years, the insurance industry has contributed generously to candidates who want to hand over the Medicare program to private insurance companies. That’s exactly what Ryan’s so-called “Path to Prosperity” would do. It would end the Medicare program as it has existed for almost half a century—a program that guarantees access to affordable care for senior citizens—and replace it with a scheme in which beneficiaries would be given “premium support” to help them buy coverage on the private market. Yes, the traditional Medicare program would continue to be a choice under the 2012 version of Ryan’s plan, but it would have to compete with private insurance companies. And because, under Ryan's plan, insurers would be able to cherry-pick the healthiest seniors, the traditional Medicare program would likely be unable to survive over the long haul. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Ryan's wife is a former lobbyist for the health insurance industry.
As the head of corporate communications for Cigna—charged, among other tasks, with disseminating financial information to the news media—I came to understand the lengths insurers routinely go to to satisfy shareholders and analysts. During congressional testimony in 2009, I explained how they make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they make it nearly impossible to understand—or even obtain—information consumers need. I described how the big for-profit insurance corporations, in their quest to meet Wall Street’s profit expectations, often cancel the coverage of policyholders who get sick and how they implement “medical management” practices that often result in policyholders being denied coverage for care their doctors recommend.
The Affordable Care Act outlaws many of the most egregious practices of the insurance industry, such as refusing to sell coverage to people with preexisting conditions and charging older people many times more than what they charge younger people for the same coverage. Ryan proposes not only to privatize Medicare but also to scrap those consumer protections, by repealing the reform law.
Of course, Mitt Romney is trying to muddy the issue. On the day he announced Ryan as his running mate, Romney accused President Obama of using the reform law to cut $700 billion from the Medicare program. That’s not true. In reality, that figure is what the Congressional Budget Office estimates will be saved over the next several years as a result of changes in the way Medicare pays doctors, hospitals and drug companies—changes that doctors, hospitals and drug companies endorsed.
They endorsed it because they understand the importance of providing coverage to the millions of people who are currently uninsured. The uninsured all too often show up at the emergency room to get care when they get sick or injured, and all too often they can’t pay their bills. Hospitals call this uncompensated care, but somebody has to pay for it, and that somebody is everybody with private insurance. Family premiums now cost more than $1,000 extra to help cover that uncompensated care. That’s what cost shifting is all about.
Romney’s misleading talking point about that $700 billion reminded me of the work my former colleagues in the insurance industry and I used to do to scare people into believing things that were not true, such as calling the Affordable Care Act a “government takeover of health care.” It wasn't hard to get our friends in politics and the media to take our spin and run with it.
And given what a boon Ryan's plan would be for the industry, it looks like health insurers just got a very well-placed friend indeed.
Wendell Potter, a former head of communications for one of the nation’s largest health insurers, is a senior analyst at The Center for Public Integrity. He is the author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans
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Hey Stupid, better study the Romney Plan, not Ryan's. There is no mention of terminating Medicare!! Just the thieves like you who control it will come to an end of Profitiering.
Like me? I think I can read......do you have a problem with that or do you only think with the right side of your brain? How does Ayn rand feel about this?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ryan-florida-seniors-medicare-20120813,0,5199240.story
A: Everyone currently 54 or younger when they reach Medicare
age, now 65. Those currently 55 and older would continue to use the traditional
government-run program. Critics fear, however, that limits on government
spending eventually would pinch benefits or raise out-of-pocket costs for
everyone in the program. Some also worry that many doctors would no longer see
Medicare patients, reducing choices for senior citizens.
Q: Would the Medicare eligibility age change?
A: Yes, Ryan proposes to gradually raise it from 65 to 67 by
2034, which proponents say is necessary to keep the program fiscally sound.
Q: What choices would those 54 and younger have when
they become eligible?
A: Beginning in 2023, they would receive a fixed amount of
money to buy coverage from a government-run program like traditional Medicare or
from a private insurance plan. The amount would vary; affluent individuals would
get less.
Ryan says it's not really a "voucher" system, because the government would
still play a role overseeing all plans. But growth in federal spending on
Medicare would be limited to the growth of the gross domestic product, plus 0.5
percent.
Republicans note that President Obama's Affordable Care Act calls for reducing Medicare
spending by $700 billion over 10 years – mostly, Obama says, by cutting payments
to providers and drug companies. But Ryan's plan calls for almost the same
amount of cuts.
Q: How would all this affect the patient's
pocketbook?
A: Results would vary, depending on the insurance plan
picked and health-care costs, which historically rise faster than inflation.
Patient out-of-pocket costs almost certainly would rise, but they also are
expected to rise under the current system, making the impact of the Ryan plan
hard to figure.
Turning Medicare into a coupon program would be an end to Medicare as we know it. When it does that is irrelevant
why penalize the people who dont get insurance ( some dont get sick a day in their life ), instead of penalizing insurance companies whose rates are skyrocketing? answer me that??? as for Politicans who are up for election or reelection..your both BS'n us by using seniors as a scare tactic..i dont buy into it.just another election he said she said and if you vote for the other side, the world as we know it will stop...well it hasnt yet. the economy may suck and the unemployment rates at a reality rate of 16% ( the real parcentage-not what washington tells us) but the world wont stop..lying politicans from both sides will still get their free healthcare and a healthy pension while us peons struggle to put food on a table
Read the article. Under Ryan, the insurance companies take the healthiest, leaving behind those on Medicare, those requiring the more expensive care. That's a cool trick by Ryan, the Ayn Rand cheerleader, and that's how Medicare will dry up. That'll leave the sick and elderly on the curb. C'mon, have you ever, in all honesty, seen the repub/tparty place the working class first, above a corporation? It NEVER happened and never will. That's the repub/tparty paycheck and they'll not mess with it. The repub/tparty honors the almighty dollar and down with any who interfere in their path. Shame that we lost the republican party when the biased USSC justices gave that criminal regime of bush/cheney/rumsfeld the WHouse. We now have another chance to continue to sanity with the re-election of Prez Obama; and a strong Democratic Congress. Yes, WE can!
Thank you Wendell Potter, :-)
I am not a romney supporter,but I felt sorry for him as how his advisors sent him out there looking like a dummy professor teaching elements of accounts on the white dry board. Romney, as a "business evangelist" forgot the simple accounting principle that, for every debit entry there should be a corresponding credit entry.Romney wrote figures on Obama`s column on the white board, lied about it, and wrote nothing, not a singl figure on his column and told the press: trust me , I am the good guy. Typical Romney secrecy.WHAT A JOKE?
Wendell, excellent commentary! Thank you.
I do believe I'd take the word of an Insurance insider over a lying politican. Thank you, Wendell Potter.
There is absolutely no reason for name calling @Ceo T Jones, it completely diminishes your point.
With Ryan as Romneys' VP pick, Ryan will have more to say than Romney does. Romney has said little of anything that is concrete and substantive. It will be Ryan's plan that will be proposed, not anything that Romney comes up with, because we already know what Romney came up with while Gov. of MA. The EXACT same program as the Affordable Health Care Act.
Very well written commentary. Thank you Wendell Potter, for your insightful and fascinating article.
Mr. Potter has been explaining the insurance industry for a while and few listen, or so it appears. In any case, the media has called Romney 'an empty suit,' and that's how he appears. I've disliked the term 'flip-flop' but Romney certainly has, giving the impression that his off the cuff remarks are rewritten, and he has no problem going back on whatever he had said. Makes him look like another Bush who turned the presidency over to Cheney, though we're not to know that, but Cheney's TV appearances leave no doubt on that score. It also appears that Ryan was chosen to bridge the religious gap. Here we go again. OBAMA 2012 and a strong Democratic Congress.
Speaking of name-calling, I guess we could start calling this new scheme “Ryancare” or “Ryanscare”, depending on your political leaning.
But here is a problem, the private insurance industry squeezed the middle class fiercely and, like the housing market, at the behest of investors in housing stocks and similar trickle-up schemes, extracted great amounts of wealth out of workers and companies, rather than investing in stocks that produce capital and promote entrepreneurship, up to the crash. Up to the crash, the health insurance industry was steadily pricing itself out of existence, which for some economic thinkers might have been a good thing.
Yet a lot of investors and pensions depend on insurance stocks. The healthcare and private health insurance industries have been subsidized by the government for decades and it could be that it was much easier for the federal government to bail out the health insurance industry as a way to shore up the economy, as it did AIG.
I hope that a serious discussion will lead to the fostering of real innovation and expansion in healthcare, rather than the current system of cycling unproductive money, aka “wealth generation.”
Get insurance out of healthcare!
Good point! The $760B not paid out from Medicare will hurt the insurance industry but will shore up Obamacare, giving millions a safety net. It's too bad Romney didn't have what it took while in MA, but a zebra does not change its stripes. WE should have known when he first lied about his tax return filing in UT as a resident and then changing his residency to the basement of his son's house in MA. Then absconding with all the files from his 4 years. Whatever, don't cry over spilt milk. But next time, be more careful. It appears Romney is a minor prophet of his church, tho the reading was not interesting enough. Let's work towards a united United States and a re-election of President Obama with a strong Democratic Congress that can make it happen.
Examine your paycheck (if you earn one and aren't one of Obama's huge number of unemployed people and permanent takers in his socialized redirtribution of the wealth system), and you will see that the payroll taxes (once restored to their full level, which is another sad story seeing the failing nature of the Medicare and Social Security Trust funds due to go bankrupt in 2022 and 3032 respectively unless they are reformed) that earned income tax payers pony up will now also go to support ObamaCare, that new radically underfunded entitlement program dreamed up by the head in the Ivory Tower clouds President and his collegues in the Congress before the American people recoiled in horror in 2010 and swept the Democrats out of control of the House, and narrowed their control in the Senate, and will surely complete the job in 2012.
I hope Mr. Potter goes on every news station and repeats this over and over. Then he can get it published as an editorial in all the papers. And shout it from the rooftops. So that anyone who doesn't know what Paul Ryan is all about, will know.
Thank you, Mr. Potter. As my grand mother use to say, "Expose the sucker and he will run."
If Ryan is a "dream" for the insurance industry, Obama is a "dream" for the 'government industry'. Frankly, I would MUCH rather see a growing a vibrant insurance industry then a growing government bureaucracy.
Yes you would because you believe the insurance company is your friend because you saw an Allstate TV ad. Really your GOP nonsense has been debunked more times then Republican politicians lied since Nixons term.
Your grammar is wrong!
Get insurance companies out of healthcare!
He Pays Less...You Pay More. That’s His Plan!
Mitt Romney accumulated his wealth as managing director of Bain Capital, a leveraged buyout fund (LBO). LBOs are driven by tax savings. Tax savings are transfers from other people to LBOs without any increase in GDP or national wealth. An LBO replaces the stock of established companies with debt.
Now imagine Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan view “established companies” are Government Agencies, i.e. Social Security, Affordable Health Care, The Post Office, Medicare, etc. whose stock is “taxpayer cash”. What exactly do you think will happen when these agencies are Privatized?
Because this is what we can expect to happen if the Romney/Ryan ticket becomes our next President/Vice President. They will privatize our government to their rich political cash cows and the American Taxpayer will be forced to pick up the tab, either in the form of a bail out or because we have to pick up pension/healthcare plans due to debt created from privatization.
Ryan and Romney are two peas of the same pod, they both inherited their wealth, utilization of tax deductions for their privately developed family holding companies, they both claim to hate government hand outs except when beneficial, neither will allow the American People to view their tax returns and they both LIE without hesitation.
Both, Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan claim President Obama and Vice President Biden can not run on their record, they claim neither has accomplished anything in the past three years. LIE! Boh claim President Obama STOLE $700 Billion from Medicare. Another LIE! Both claim that President Obama is un-American. LIE! And both claim that President Obama is anti-religious, which I can not say is an out and out lie. I myself am anti organized religion...I think organized religion is just as corrupt as most corporations.
We the People deserve better than two lying crooks who want to gut our nation for the benefit of themselves and their rich buddies. I do not believe that Obama/Biden are perfect (afterall they are both men), but I do believe that given the opportunity, President Obama and Vice President Biden will be better for our nation in the long run. We have seen their tax returns, they don’t seem to have anything to hide and they have been fighting for a stronger Middle Class, you know, the 99%.
Government is a cancer. Romney and Ryan are the surgeons. Time to start cutting.
More like Dumb & Dumber. Surgeons! Ha! Ha!
Hmm LYIN MITT and his BLUE EYED DEVIL I think the funniest thing about L2(Liars)/D2(Deceivers) is the level of jealousy L2/D2 have toward PBO, which was on full display when they tried to recreate the President's exit from Air Force One by having L2/D2 come down a flight of stairs on a ship. That was hilarious. I cannot wait to see what Saturday Night Live does with those images.
Thats funny seeing as Ryan is a career politician who has never held any job outside of the government in his adult life. Yeah right governments bad because of government employees like Ryan who makes it bad.
HEY GIRL,
Vote for me and it will be the last choice you will ever be allowed to make
XO P. Ryan
MJB in Des Moines
Time to make for profit insurance industry work for a living...
What Mr. Ryan refuses to say, for obvious reason, is that his conservative proposals will target the poor and working families for massive cuts, and at the same time his conservative policies ensure that the wealthy pay zero taxes. ......."Cut taxes for the rich, cut food to the poor". Repulsive Republicans
I think it is political malpractice for your guests not to say the words MEDICARE ADVANTAGE when discussing the Affordable Care Act's cuts to Medicare. If you are explaining you are losing. Medicare Advantage does not need to be explained since seniors already know what it is (was?) ... Insurance companies heavily marketed their plans. What is Medicare Advantage? It is (was?) traditional Medicare plus gym memberships plus a hefty dose of insurance company overhead and profit. No wonder they marketed their plans.
Medicare Advantage has been an expensive failure. My 74 year old mother had the intelligence to actually research many different supplemental insurance companies before buying into the MA and found one that ends up much cheaper. No co-pays, cheaper medicines. She's been preaching about the cost of this program since day one. Just like everything else politicians say, you have to do the research!
The point is.....all insurance companies, and pharmacy companies are ripping off the public. We need some regulations and control. Obama is for that.....what is the right going for?
Obama has basicly sewed up the stupid donut hole, and ryan wants you to be falling into it again. That is a big difference for those who NEED certain medications.
Tax....fee .....or find.
Code words, code words, code words.
Taxes, Women, immigrants, race, religion, insurance, Social Security, medicaid/medicare ?
Speak clearly.....and stop the lies
Romney, Rand, Ryan and Republicans will change this Country for the worse.
Aldelson is already asking romney for favors.....because he is in legal trouble.
I love the statement how if government regulations got out of the way then "dozens" of insurance companies would compete. That's nonsense. Before the ACA, there were 14 major insurance companies that had been cobbled together from mergers and acquisitions from hundreds of original smaller companies. They then proceeded to divide the market and make billions more in profit. They are trusts...they dont compete because they dont have to. They are why antitrust legislation was passed, but unfortunately, they are exempt. They do not compete for our business but squeeze us for profits. This is the source of their abuses. Regulation is the only thing keeping it from being worse. Wake up people! Corporations care about profits and will maximize profits any way they are allowed, hook or crook.
adding a profit seeking layer of insurance to Medicare is just beyond comprehension....
unless you are in the back pocket of the insurance companies
I've worked my whole life contributing to Medicare and I expect to reap its benefits in just a few years. I congratulate our President in cutting the waste and fraud from Medicare to ensure its solvency.
This could be totally devastating for Seniors, Obama taking $700B from Medicare to fund the unpopular Obamacare which would now deprive current Seniors of adequate benefits and coverage. This is a huge problem for the President, it makes the Romney/Ryan plan look decent.
Game's over, Cindy...
You've been felted...
http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/08/16/a-guide-to-the-right-wing-medias-dishonest-medi/189385
The Romney-Ryan campaign in its latest TV ad assails Obama for approving the cuts in 2010. "Obama has cut $716 billion dollars from Medicare," says the narrator. "The money you paid for your guaranteed health care...is going to a massive new government program that's not for you."
Voters might be left with the impression that Romney and Ryan have both opposed the cuts. The truth is that Ryan himself endorses them in his signature budget plan -- the same plan Romney has said he would sign as president if it reached his desk.
However,
>Washington Post: The Affordable Care Act Would Not "Change The Basket Of Benefits That Patients Have Access To." In an August 14 post on The Washington Post's Wonkblog, Sarah Kliff pointed out that it's "worth noting that there's one area these cuts don't touch: Medicare benefits."
Providing Medicare vouchers to pay competing private insurance companies will shift the risk and increased costs for care from Medicare to the patient. Some patients would have to choose between paying for better coverage and having more money for food and other items.
You need to read! The Presidents plan would take nothing from you Ryan's plan would eventually do away with medicare as it shifted the new people to the 6000 a year coupon plan medicare would have all the older folks costing to much money and it would go belly up
Cabbie, No, No, No, the game is just getting interesting. Why in God's green earth would you defund $716B out of Medicare, roll the dice with absolutely no guarantees which according to you and the Washington Post of all sources would not "change the basket of benefits that patients have access to" while it's already vastly underfunded by $23 trillion according to the Congressinal Budget Office and projected to go bankrupt in 5-8 yrs. I think it's a bunch of Obamaloney to me. So, I guess we'll just have to cut back more on the military but then OH NO, RUSSIA AND CHINA WILL ATTACK !!!
Cold War's over Cindy. We won....
Need to stop listening to neo-cons and theo-cons... And nobody's defunding anything out of Medicare, but Ryan's plan would gut it and put the money in the hand of private insurance companies. Go read what Mr. Potter said elsewhere on the subject...
I gotta wonder, though, what's with all the bat@!$%# crazy types? Shoot, when I was a Republican and Clinton was doing the Lewinsky, I wasn't that nutso. Biggest worry was it would get the bluenoses out in force, and sure enough, that's what's happened.... I've watched those sorts shackle (gotta use that word to p*ss off the Teapublicans who think it's racist) free thinking and honest enterprise here on Planet Utah (we're pretty much a tourist-and multi-level marketing economy here, plus the stuff that comes from Washington, way more than than is sent there),
Checkmate huh? I told you have to find another hobby, creative writing ain't gonna cut it, deep analytical thinking required which apparantly in your case might need a little more polishing.
Nope, checkmate is an expression used in a board game; I was using a poker metaphor this time....
And before you criticize me on the subject of analytical thinking, you're going to have to demonstrate you're even capable of any sort of thinking at all...
I'm not going to hold my breath, however....
I am an older male, pushing 70, and have had the usual grab bag of heath issues come up, Type II diabetes as a family genetic issue with all the associated co-morbitity issues, and I have had no difficulty in obtaining supplemental health insurance before ObamaCare to my Medicare.
But I see that of the $716 billion dollars that Obama stole from the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for Obamacare's federal subsidies for the expensive one size fits all health insurance policies DHHS will be mandating in 2014, and the expansion of Medicaid, $500 billion is being taken from doctors and medical institutions fees, and supposed finding of waste and fraud (good luck with that if its Democrat appointed officials doing the policing) and the to come rationing of care from the ObamaCare "best practices" 15 laymen non practioners commission. And the other $216 billion came out of the doing away with the private insurance HMO like coverage of Medicare Advantage.
Seems to me the Romney/Ryan Plan would keep traditional Medicare, and the Trust fund would have that $716 billion restored. And only for those age 54 or younger would there be the ability to choose a tract to their future retirements that would be stay with traditional Medicare, or take a federal subsidy from the Trust fund to purchase private heath insurance, perhaps with a HMO that would provide similar coverage as the old Medicare Advantage did. All Traditional Medicare recepients pay a portion of their premiums back into the trust fund, and the government pays as a fee for service plan after annual deductions with copays assigned to the individual. Supplemental Private Insurance for a premium pays after a deductable, and either some or all of the individual's assigned co-pays, depending on the policy level and how much premium the individual want's to pay for the supplement coverage.
Now that that is fully understood, the Dirty Little Secret of the Stealing of $716 billion from the Medicare Trust fund for the next 10 years to pay for ObamaCare for all under 65 citizens, employer and individual policy premium subsidies and expanded Medicaid, is that to make up for that and keep the Trust Fund solvent until at least 2022, Medicare recepients premiums, deductions, and co-pays are going to have to go up...way up!
"My what wicked webs we weave when first we practice to deceive." Nancy Pelosi: We have to pass ObamaCare before we will know what is in the bill. Wicked Witch of the West!
The word in the Walter Scott quote is "tangled," Grandpa...
And I see you were all in on the same hand I just felted Cindy on... That $700 billion figure is a baldfaced lie that does occur with the "Ryan Plan," but is offset with the Affordable Care act...
Not that you'll read what the link says, but thanks for tripling my chip stack....
And boyhowdy, what were you swilling when you ripped on Chris Matthews for being diabetic? Be almost worth going back to find that one just see your own tangled web...
I left out that the payroll taxes (once they are restored to their full level, another robbing from the Trust Funds by the floundering Obama government so that condsumers could put that money into the immediate economy in the past two years) any earned income individual pays as matched by their employer under ObamaCare won't just go to pay into the Social Security Trust Fund and the Medicare Trust Fund, but will have a percentage siphoned off to pay for the new drastically underfunded and unwanted by the American People ObamaCare.
And if the taking of over $700 billion from Medicare is "a bald faced lie" as the alcoholic Cab Driver without a portfolio champion of the Obana Administration here insists so strenously above, than Obana campaign spokesperson, the infamous, Democrat bald faced liar over the PAC attack add snafu of the last week that accussed Romney of being a woman's murderer must have been lying when she counted as an "achievement" by Obama the taking of $700 billion from Medicare to pay for the (Un)affordable Care Act.
Man, I definitely have to hook up with my old high school mate Rex Nutting. We can compare notes on how we've been labeled by the Teabagged crowd... What is unbelievable is it's the same exact name calling! No fooling...
Of course Rex is he winner right now; I haven't been b**chslapped by Ann Coulter and he has... It offered some useful research though, to find out that Adam's Apple Annie and Grandpa Fuzz apparently use the same fortune tellers--er staff writers. Nothing original, just histrionic lockstep stuff with a lot rhetorical hyperbole.
http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=C64D3974-B0D7-11E1-AB8D-002128049AD6
U.S. Debt Load Falling at the Fastest Pace since the 1950's
Rex knows a bit about portfolios, Fuzzie... I'm just a history sort who supports his habit by keeping the streets safe putting drunks to bed... But I'm not one to shun Google (or even Yahoo) because they try to track my on-line actions...
And really, you would do well to indulge in a little research rather than just doing parrot imitations. The story on the woman who died didn't involve an accusation of murder; it involved Romney and Bain Capital closing the plant where her husband worked and his losing insurance benefits...
Now we know Romney has "taken off the table" discussions about his record as Massachusetts Governor--same as his religion and his Bain history--but the fact is he didn't reduce Massachusetts deficit; he simply re-structured it as long term debt.
Regarding Retirement for Members of Congress
Members of Congress are not eligible for a pension until they reach the age of 50, but only if they've completed 20 years of service. Members are eligible at any age after completing 25 years of service or after they reach the age of 62. Please also note that Members of Congress have to serve at least 5 years to even receive a pension.
The amount of a congressperson's pension depends on the years of service and the average of the highest 3 years of his or her salary. By law, the starting amount of a Member's retirement annuity may not exceed 80% of his or her final salary.
According to the Congressional Research Service, 413 retired Members of Congress were receiving federal pensions based fully or in part on their congressional service as of Oct. 1, 2006. Of this number, 290 had retired under CSRS and were receiving an average annual pension of $60,972. A total of 123 Members had retired with service under both CSRS and FERS or with service under FERS only. Their average annual pension was $35,952 in 2006
.
Members of Congress are covered by private health insurance under the same system that covers all federal employees. They have to pay their share of the cost!
The facts: Members of Congress have the option to purchase private health insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program, managed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. It is the same program that is available to all federal workers, and similar to plans offered by many large businesses.
Your retirement income figures are misleading in that FERS federal employees (including, of course, Congressmen and women and Senators and their staffs) recieve a much smaller defined retirement benefit than do the CSRS emplyees, but that is supplemented by the much larger federal govenment matching to employees 403b tax sheltered retirement plans for the FERS employees. HeyThere. But otherwise, very right on.