David Kleinbard

@WOLF_Financial He’s exactly right. While shorting is intellectually satisfying, the math is against you badly. Your best shorts become a tiny % of your portfolio real fast. A badly timed short becomes a big % real fast. Very few live to tell about it.

STANLEY DRUCKENMILLER: "I SHORTED $200 MILLION OF INTERNET STOCKS IN MARCH 1999. IN THREE WEEKS I COVERED THEM AT A $600 MILLION LOSS." "I was short 12 stocks. They all went bankrupt. Every one of them." He was right on every single pick. Still lost $600M. "If you're dead wrong on a long, you can lose 100%. If you're dead wrong on a short, you can lose 10 times your money." "Frankly, I'm not sure I've ever made money in shorts. I've never had a down year, but I'm not sure I've made money in shorts. I like it. It's fun. But you can get your head handed to you." "Don't try that at home."

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy If you guys want to know where the major medical waste and abuse happens, I spent 15 years studying it at hedge funds and elsewhere and I can explain why we spend $14K per capita versus $7K in Europe. Write. Call. Happy to show you the big picture.

I could take an hour to carefully compose a post to tell you how to solve it, David, but why should I do that when you'll just glance at what I wrote, give it zero thought, and come back with another knee-jerk response or change to yet another topic. You WANT the answer to be more government control which is why you won't let your mind go anywhere else. Thanks but I'm moving on.

Welcome to a $19.8 million Adult Daycare in California - No adults - No info how to enroll my “grandma” - Phone number to nowhere - New BMW parked outside Prime example of fraud, waste and abuse END THE FRAUD.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy I’m convinced that the federal government will reduce spending on the 41 expansion states. Many states will dig into their own pockets. How else you insure someone making $20,000 a year escapes me.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy Here is my assignment for your generation: we spend $14,000 per capita on healthcare. Europe spends $7,000. Yet we die first. The problem goes way beyond fraud and into how healthcare operates. Solve this issue. You may begin.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy DOGE was ineffective because they forgot that Congress controls the purse. The large budget deficits? That’s Congress. Want smaller government: write to your Congressman.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy About 40% of people eligible to vote don’t bother to vote. If you want to create change, motivate those 40%. The country is fiscally screwed. I’m too old to fix it. You have a chance if you focus less on fraud and more on tax policy and all of govt spend.

“According to official government reports, Medicaid issued $543 billion in improper payments from 2015 through 2024.1 But that’s only half of it. That $543 billion includes only what the federal government audited, and the Obama and Biden administrations excluded eligibility checks in their audits of improper payments in Medicaid—the so-called PERM (Payment Error Rate Measurement) audits. We estimate that the true amount of improper payments in Medicaid is twice as high as reported. In only two out of the past 10 years did audits by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) assess the accuracy and completeness of state eligibility reviews. In those two years that did include meaningful, complete audits of state Medicaid programs, improper payment rates exceeded 25 percent. Applying a 25 percent improper payment rate across the $4.3 trillion of federal Medicaid spending between 2015 and 2024 yields roughly $1.1 trillion in federal Medicaid improper payments over the past decade.” ~Paragon Health Institute, 3/3/25 paragoninstitute.org/medicaid/medic… I don’t know where you’re getting your 4% figure, but logically Paragon’s estimate seems much closer to reality given the massive levels of fraud now being exposed daily in similar govt programs. Medicaid should be covering only a tiny fraction of Americans, NOT 26%. You: “I would focus your thought on why 1% of people own 50% of the stock market while such a huge number live from check to check.” Why should I focus on that?? What other people own in stocks is completely irrelevant to my own situation. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos did not cause me to be poorer by creating great businesses. On the contrary, they’ve enabled average workers to share in their success by making their stocks available for anyone to buy. Do you see how perverse it is that liberals fixate so much on the legitimate wealth earned by entrepreneurs like Elon Musk while at the very same time dismissively ignoring the trillions of tax dollars that are STOLEN from all of us by thieves? I will never understand that mentality. What the Left never sees is how their own misguided policies help fuel the very wealth disparities they cry about. When uneducated, low-skilled and inexperienced workers are plentiful, corporations have no incentive to offer higher wages to compete for those workers. Tragically, the Left exacerbates this reality by (1) using tax dollars to reward/subsidize even those who could and should be doing more for themselves; and (2) fighting tooth and nail against any effort to stop the flow of illegals (i.e. cheap labor that competes with America’s poor). Corporations pay big dollars for highly-skilled and/or experienced workers (which many import from other countries). If low-skilled workers were incentivized to get on a path to move up into that category, this would reduce the supply of low-skilled workers and naturally force corporations to pay more to attract those workers. But I repeat, leftwing policies interfere with the natural mechanics of the economy. If you GENUINELY want things to change, you should think about that. As for waste, fraud and abuse (WFA) in defense spending, needless to say I’m against that just as much. DOGE was created to go after WFA in EVERY aspect of federal spending, including defense. Do I need to remind you which side was hostile to DOGE and wanted it disbanded? National defense is the #1 job of the federal government per the Constitution. Providing healthcare is not a constitutional mandate of the federal govt. I’m not trivializing WFA in defense spending, only pointing out how much smaller the WFA would be if the federal government would limit itself to what it was intended to do. If healthcare is to be subsidized, that should fall to the states. That arrangement would not only force state governments to be appropriately careful in how generous they are with taxpayer money but it would also incentivize them to audit those dollars far better than they do now since no one else is going to be sharing that burden.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy DOGE sent in 23 year old kids with laptops to try to understand very complex government accounting. These databases are super sensitive. It’s not a place to “move fast and break things.” Courts overturn everything you do.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy If fraud ties your underwear in a knot advocate for more Inspector Generals and more prosecutors. We have had a serious loss of auditors under this administration. DOJ has lost a ton of prosecutors. We need more eyes not fewer.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy Also, think of the alternative. No medical insurance for many low income people causes mountains of unpaid medical debt at hospitals. Hospitals then overcharge you to cover their losses on unpaid debt. You pay either way.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy CMS itself estimates 6%. An improper payment can be one that simply lacks all proper documentation. Not fraud necessarily. States do pay for Medicaid. Expansion comes from their pockets.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy If you want to get upset over loss of taxpayer dollars start with the cost overruns in the F35 jet program documented by the GAO. It is a $2 trillion program by now on jets that are outdated in the era of drone warfare. Elon Musk would agree.

Glad you didn't give up on our discussion. I want to push back on your claim that I have a "dim view of humanity." I have a realistic view of humanity. I believe, correctly, that humanity consists of all kinds of people - some great/good, some so-so and some bad. You know that's true as well. And can we stipulate now that you don’t know EVERYONE on Medicaid, and your personal friends might not be an accurate representation of the entire picture? Per Search AI, “Medicaid was originally projected to cost $238 million in its first year after its establishment in 1965, but it actually cost more than $1 billion that year.” Nearly 4X over estimates in year ONE. The cost is now closing in on $TRILLION per year, not because people are inherently less capable of providing for themselves, but because too many have been trained to look to the government (i.e. their taxpaying neighbors) for support instead of finding a way to take care of themselves. The revelations coming from investigative journalists like Nick Shirley and others prove that programs like Medicaid are plum targets for fraud, and the "bad" of humanity are taking full advantage of it. This should have been 100% expected. The tragedy of it all is that the people stealing from Medicaid are stealing from the very people (i.e. the poor) that it was intended to help. Worsening that tragedy is that people like you are enabling it through your blind defense.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy If you tell me 4% of a program’s money is stolen, it means 96% went to its intended use. I would focus your thought on why 1% of people own 50% of the stock market while such a huge number live from check to check.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy Medicaid fraud is one of the most unforgivable forms of fraud. But there is a stigma and a shame with being poor that the vast majority of people seek to emerge from. The income cutoff levels in a non expansion state are morally wrong.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy So you think people deliberately avoid trying to make the best of their lives and skills because Medicaid is out there? That’s a very dim view of humanity and demeaning to the poor. I know people on Medicaid; they aren’t lazy.

YOU should be shocked about how poor some Americans have allowed themselves to become when there are many careers (plumbers, forklift operators, truck drivers, sales reps and many others) that don't require a degree. But why should anyone work towards these higher-paying jobs when dupes and Useful Idiots will arrange for them to get taxpayer-funded healthcare while they work part-time at The Waffle House?

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy There is an undercurrent of racism in all of your work. You demean the poor. You view them as lazy and stupid. Most of your targets are black. People have dignity and want to improve themselves. I’m done now.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy Medicare and Medicaid are obligations of the federal government because Congress passed the enabling legislation and the President signed it. When states expand Medicaid they did into their own pockets to do it.

@KleinbardD75814 @nickshirleyy Sigh. Right on cue, the old "we spend $$$$ on the military." Go read the Constitution and tell me which of these is listed as a fundamental obligation of the federal government: (a) National defense; or (b) Medicaid.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy I spent the first 10 years of my career in journalism. I had Congressional press tags hanging around my neck. My articles have been reprinted in every newspaper you care to name. I don’t consider myself leftist either.

So the infamously leftwing-biased Wikipedia profiles Rufo as just a "rightwing activist." Nothing self-serving there, eh? This is why Wikipedia will eventually be irrelevant. Question: If leftwing "journalists" refuse to investigate anything that sheds a negative light on Democrats or the Left, who should do it? I'm sure you'd be happily satisfied if no one did. One great example of Rufo's real journalism is his work exposing Claudine Gay, the first Black woman to serve as Harvard’s president. She was a serial plagiarist, which contributed to her well-deserved firing (although, as a fellow leftist, she was protected by Harvard and allowed to keep the most important thing - her salary, when she was symbolically demoted). As a leftist yourself, you don't recognize Rufo's work as a journalist because you've never seen what a REAL journalist looks like. You play the game of dismissing anything that doesn't support your precious prejudices, which - again - makes you a danger to the rest of us.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy The income cutoff limits for Medicaid in a non-expansion state are shockingly low. Even in New York, the cutoff is $1,800 per month. If you earn that in NY, you are eating tuna and rice for dinner every night. Life is not good for you.

I'm sure fraud happens at some level in all states, but Blue states have been notoriously uncooperative with the Trump Administration's efforts to find and fix fraud, to the detriment of all Americans. Furthermore, it's overwhelmingly Democrats who routinely push to expand the welfare and entitlement programs that are being so rampantly stolen from. When you can show me the Red state governor pushing to expand welfare and entitlement programs for his/her state and refusing to assist federal efforts to find fraud, we'll add them to the poster.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy If you consider Medicaid great insurance to have, spend one month on it and try to find a doctor who accepts it. I know doctors personally who consider all Medicaid care to be charity care. People pay $15,000 a year to NOT be on Medicaid.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy We spend $1 trillion on the military. Where are your calls to shrink that? If you think there is no fraud in defense contracting, I have a bridge I can sell you. Medicaid pays doctors so badly they consider it close to zero.

@CSheahan7924 @nickshirleyy The fact that 26% of Americans need to turn to Medicaid, which few doctors accept, should shock you about how poor we have allowed part of our society to become. Medicaid is terrible insurance to have.

Ronald Reagan once said (paraphrasing) that liberals know so much that isn't true. You keep proving that again and again, as Grok has demonstrated. But it seems being wrong doesn't cause you to rethink any of your opinions. That's typical. There was never a time when poor people were dying in the streets for lack of healthcare. Medicaid was sold to this nation as an emergency plan to help only the poorest Americans. NOW, per Search AI, nearly 90 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid as of FY24, or about 26.2% of the U.S. population. In 2023 the annual cost was approximately $900B, and now we're learning that a big chunk of that money goes to scammers. But it's not your money so, meh, you don't care. It takes adults who genuinely care about this country's future as well as the rights of taxpayers to understand how corrupted Medicaid has become and to take action. Biden & Obama didn't do that. They just worked feverishly to get as many people into the system as they could because the Democrat Party thrives on that dependence. It's all about what's good for THEM, not what's good for the country.