Posts tagged with 'reform'
Weekly Immigration Wire: Silence Strengthens Opposition
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By Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger
President Obama is citing the Healthcare debate as a reason for postponing immigration reform until 2010. But in the interim, the White House is laying the groundwork for an enforcement agenda by expanding programs such as 287(g), Secure Communities and e-Verify, amidst a growing matrix of detention centers. Anti-immigration factions are taking advantage of the lull in legislative action to push their own agenda.
The Progressive takes the unequivocal stand that “President Obama is wrong to postpone immigration reform.” Author Ed Morales makes it clear that while healthcare and economic issues are “understandably urgent,” the choice to delay reform “de-prioritizes” people who have paid their taxes but have not been given a path to citizenship.
The problem is, immigration reform and healthcare reform are inextricably connected. WireTap cites a central tenant of healthcare reform’s “artificially amplified ‘public’ opposition” to immigration, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: It’s “the notion that ‘Congress would give illegal immigrants health insurance at taxpayer expense.’”
Is the racially charged core of this “chameleon colored outrage” being purposefully left out of the general dialogue? The ugly facts are that a “third of all ‘Hispanics’ in the U.S., almost half of the undocumented, and a fifth of African Americans” lack health insurance today. And yet, only “one in eight whites” lack health care.
After all, “Not all immigrants are alike.” New America Media’s David Hayes-Bautista compares the experiences of two immigrants named Jean-Claude and Juan Carlos. Hayes-Bautista effectively illustrates the Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant paradigm and asks “Why do some immigrants move quickly and swiftly up the educational and professional ladder, while others appear to remain stymied at the bottom?” Ultimately, “both segments of immigrants deserve to be included in the future healthcare system that their presence will help to fund.”
But some clearly don’t think with such a progressive bent, as the New Mexico Independent reports. Instead of trying to bring greater truth to the entire discussion, anti-immigrant factions are “using [healthcare reform] to whip up fear and anger toward immigrants,” unsurprisingly claiming that they are “a costly and burdensome drain on any taxpayer-supported U.S. health care system.”
At a Portsmouth, New Hampshire town hall where the crowd awaited the President’s arrival, one “white-bearded protestor” suggested murder as a solution for “illegals.” (Video via the Young Turks)
Judging from the agitated protestor’s words, he, like others, views immigration through a fearful zero sum scarcity model in which one person’s well-being equals another person’s loss. There are better ways to approach this issue. New America Media reports on a more enlightened approach being employed in New Mexico. The Las Cruces-based Colonias Development Council (CDC), along with other community groups, recently held a series of meetings that discussed “living and working conditions in underdeveloped border-area communities,” but filtered the conversation “through the lens of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations back in 1948.” Such a lens introduces not just political concerns, but concerns related to the “guarantees of healthcare, education, employment, and housing” as human rights.
Migrants, like those of the CDC, are exploring the truly progressive ideas that proclaim all humans deserving of certain rights. And when the White House takes immigration reform off the radar with one hand and clamps down punitively with the other, it sends a signal to companies like Yum! brands, which are implementing illegal policies. In These Times‘ Robin Peterson tells the story of a very unhappy KFC workforce where “No Match” letters have resulted in many lost jobs. No Match letters were introduced by the Bush administration. The idea is that your employer sends your Social Security number to a database, which returns a “match” that indicates valid citizenship. “No match” equals no citizenship, and usually, no job. However, a judge ruled shortly after the legislation’s introduction, that it was illegal to fire a person over an “unmatched” return.
“Time’s up,” writes Michelle Chen of RaceWire. While the President has made some “overtures” toward immigration reform, the White House has “generally adhered to the status quo set by the Bush administration.” Not all involved are feeling so patient: “Faced with the news that immigration reform may have to wait until 2010, some organizations say their patience has run out.” The Mexican American Political Association, for one, has called for direct action to make clear the urgent necessity for leadership on this issue:
We are taking the brunt of the attacks and suffering the immediate consequences of this misguided policy, therefore, our call is urgent to take to the streets on September 5th, the Labor Day weekend, and October 12th, not to ask but demand that President Obama stop the attacks on immigrants and that he fulfill his promise of immigration reform, that which we heard during the presidential campaign, but has recently been forgotten.
Increasingly, the White House appears to be backing away from its promises to important constituencies. The administration’s inaction plays out with very real results on the ground, including increased tension, anxiety, and violence against immigrant communities. As we are a nation of immigrants, the effects of ignoring this pressing issue are widespread and will only grow worse in time.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration and is free to reprint. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: The Rocky Road to Reform
by Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire Blogger
Healthcare is dominating domestic politics this week, as Congress and President Obama outline their visions for reform. The president is pushing Congress to pass a bill that keeps healthcare costs in check before the August deadline. Obama must have been disappointed when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced last week that the Dem’s healthcare bills won’t cut spending. The president won’t sign a bill that doesn’t contain cost cuts, so legislators know they’ll have to tweak the bill.
Obama’s strenuous efforts to pass healthcare reform have invited comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which created the American social safety net. In Salon, Michael Lind argues that Obama’s insistence on tying health insurance to employment actually betrays the legacy of the New Deal:
We decided that when it came to benefits our guiding principle should be a “citizen-based social contract.” We chose this phrase, not to discriminate against non-citizens, but to express two ideas: first, that benefits like healthcare ought to be not a privilege but rather an entitlement of all citizens in our democratic republic, and second, that all benefits should be detached from employers and follow individuals through their lives. In thinking about healthcare, we rejected various options that would not move us toward a citizen-based social insurance system. Unfortunately, the health plan being promoted by Obama and Congress is based on one of those bad options.
Special interests are sparing no expense in their final campaign to influence healthcare reform. Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, D-Mont., was charged with crafting a public plan for a bipartisan seal of approval, but raked in more than $3 million from healthcare lobbyists and industry groups between 2003 and 2008, according to Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent. Baucus announced that he was swearing off healthcare bucks after June 1 in order to avoid the “appearance” of conflict of interest.
Aides for Baucus told The Post that the Finance chairman stopped accepting contributions from healthcare PACs after June 1 to eliminate the appearance of conflicts of interest. But he’s not doing a very good job following through. On June 15, according to the Federal Election Commission, Baucus accepted $5,000 from the Schering Plough Corporate Better Government Fund.
Baucus’s staff say the Schering Plough money has since been returned. No word on whether the money got sent back before or after the story hit the media.
Advocates of single payer did score a victory last week. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) managed to pass an amendment to the House bill that gives states the option of creating their own single payer healthcare systems. John Nichols of The Nation explains that the Kucinich amendment opened the door to single payer. As Nichols points out, Canada didn’t start with a national single payer system. The province of Saskatchewan created its own healthcare program that became the model for Canada’s celebrated Medical Services Plan.
Josh Holland of AlterNet says the Kucinich amendment may salvage healthcare reform. That sounds a bit hyperbolic, but it’s definitely a step forward. For additional background, check out Truthdig’s interview with Kucinich.
Abortion was back in the news this week. The Prospect‘s Dana Goldstein notes that the White House appears to be vacillating as to whether abortions will be covered by national healthcare. Health and budget guru Peter Orzag danced around the issue on the last Meet the Press. This kind of equivocation is part of a pattern: Back in March, senior Obama domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, a former Planned Parenthood board member, insulted the intelligence of viewers of the Christian Broadcasting Network by claiming that she hadn’t even discussed the issue with Obama.
Should the anti-abortionist zealot accused of gunning down Dr. George Tiller be charged as a domestic terrorist? I weigh the pros and cons in my new piece at RH Reality Check.
Finally, Laura Miller of Salon favorably reviews Ryan Grim’s new book, This is Your Country on Drugs, an offbeat social history of America’s twin love affairs with drugs and moral panics over drugs.
With the August deadline looming, legislators will be scrambling to get their respective bills in shape in time to pass healthcare reform through the budget reconciliation process. Odds are that the bills will be further scaled back and watered down in the process.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Czar 44, Where are You?
Weekly Pulse: Czar 44, Where are You?
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire blogger
The Obama administration may be about to pull the plug on the health czar. The position has gone unfilled since Obama’s appointee-apparent, former Sen. Tom Daschle, withdrew his name from consideration for both czar and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in early February. Several serious candidates are emerging in the unofficial race to lead HHS, but there’s no corresponding shortlist for health czar.
The czar and his Office of Health Reform were initially touted as proof that Obama was really serious about shepherding a health reform package through Congress. But the Obama team may ultimately decide that the Office of Health Reform is an obstacle instead of an asset without Daschle and ditch it altogether.
As Erza Klein explains in the American Prospect, the position was created especially for Daschle and any other candidate might be worse than nothing as far as passing a healthcare reform package goes. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly agrees, and says that nixing the health czar doesn’t necessarily indicate that the Obama administration is any less committed to healthcare reform.
The purpose of the health czar was to create a single emissary to represent President Obama’s healthcare agenda to Congress. When the Clintons tried to reform healthcare in 1993, they discovered that various powerful administration officials were claiming to speak for the president.
The health czar was supposed to prevent future confusion as the president’s spokesperson. Many senior healthcare officials are already close to Obama and a similar situation could arise. Daschle would have been a credible health czar because he’s closer to the president than any of them, and a former congressional heavyweight to boot. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is a front-runner for HHS secretary and she has a very good relationship with Obama. But Gov. Sebelius is a Washington outsider who has never served in the U.S. Congress, which might make her a less compelling candidate for czar.
Ezra Klein, linked above, argues that if nobody can fill Daschle’s shoes, appointing a less compelling czar might just add to the din of executive branch officials vying for the attention of key Congressional leaders.
Maybe it’s a good idea to send as many Obama health officials to Congress as possible. If nothing else, they might cut into time the reps are currently spending with health insurance industry lobbyists, as Talking Points Memo reports.
Speaking of contenders for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Gov. Howard Dean recently published an article on AlterNet defending Obama’s comparative effectiveness research (CER) agenda against right wing critics like Rush Limbaugh. Dean draws on his experience as a doctor and a healthcare policy-maker to argue that CER is a way to put more scientific evidence in the hands of doctors, so they can choose the very best treatment for the money. Right wingers don’t like the idea. They’re literally afraid that if science determines that a treatment is bogus, the government will stop paying for it. Right wingers calls this “rationing.” Taxpayers might call it evidence-based policy. Last we checked, Medicare and Medicaid were not faith-based programs.
As Dean points out, the CER to be funded by the new economic stimulus bill is officially for doctors, not legislators. “Mr. Limbaugh and his cohorts would have you believe that this research will be used to deny needed care to your great Aunt May and be run by the politburo. But the Bill passed by Congress states right up front that the Government can not make coverage decisions based on this research,” Dean wrote. Realistically, though, that’s kind of a hollow assurance. Once the research is done, there’s no way to stop legislators from using publicly available research findings to make healthcare decisions.
In another corner of the healthcare reform-o-sphere, Katrina vanden Heuvel says that time is right to reform New York’s draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws in The Nation. These laws have been on the books 35 years. The laws essentially force judges to send drug possessors to jail based on the weight of the drugs they were caught with, whether the judge thinks imprisonment would be a good idea or not. New York’s budget crisis might be a blessing in disguise for drug reform, vanden Heuvel argues, because policy-makers are sick of paying to keep drug offenders locked up whether they need it or not.
And finally, some good news from RH Reality Check. Many people just wouldn’t feel right stepping out without a spritz of perfume, a blast of breath-freshener, or regrettably, a head-to-toe shellacking with Axe Body Spray. As Joe Veix reports for RH, another spray-on product may one day be added to the essential equipment list: contraceptive. An Australian company is currently testing a hormone spritz for women. The product is applied to the forearm. Like the contraceptive patch, the spray is designed to deliver hormones through the skin. Researchers hope that through-the-skin delivery can produce the same results as pills, but with lower doses of hormones and fewer side effects.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit
href=”http://healthcare.newsladder.net/” title=”Healthcare.NewsLadder.net” id=”so75″>Healthcare.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the ECONOMY, and IMMIGRATION, check out, <a href=”http://economy.newsladder.net/”>Immigration.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: The Daschle Debacle
Tom Daschle withdrew his name from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Health Czar on Tuesday in the face of overwhelming public pressure to step aside. Daschle had been plagued by ethics problems that emerged during his confirmation process: He failed to report taxable benefits, including a chauffeur and vehicle loaned by a political ally. Daschle repayed over $100,000 in back taxes and interest last month, but it wasn’t enough.
In the video clip, above, Andrea Mitchell tells CNN that she’s just gotten off the phone with a “tearful” Daschle who said that he was withdrawing because he couldn’t pass healthcare if his ethics issues were too much of a distraction. (Hat tip to RH Reality for the dramatic clip.)
Czar 44, where are you? Like many others, Ernest Luning of the Colorado Independent wonders if meaningful healthcare reform is now up in the air. It’s a good question. As Matt Cooper reports for TPMDC, the Obama administration didn’t really have a plan B. Daschle was supposed to be the administration’s single point of contact for all things health care, and the Health Czar job was created just for him. Now, Ezra Klein asks in The American Prospect, what happens to the Office of Health Policy Reform?
Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy director of the OHR, described the thinking yesterday in her speech to the Academy Health Policy Conference. “Health reform is such an all encompassing and important priority to the President that he needed someone in the White House coordinating the effort,” she said. The question is whether he still does. OHR was created for Daschle at Daschle’s request. Obama wanted Daschle in the White House. Will he want Daschle’s successor in such close proximity? Will he split HHS and OHR?
Losing Daschle is a blow to reform, but it’s not a lethal wound by any means. His main qualification for the job was that he knew the Senate. Given the healthy Democratic majority in the Senate, I’m not sure that his mojo is as critical as it might have been.
In Mother Jones, James Ridgeway argues that Daschle was not only doomed for being a deadbeat tax-payer, but more importantly, for not reporting the proceeds of his high-flying lifestyle as an undeclared healthcare industry lobbyist. Daschle literally made millions from cronies in industries that he would have helped regulate as Health Czar.
John Nichols of the Nation says good riddance: Daschle wasn’t so progressive in electoral politics, either, Nichols notes. As a senator, he worked closely with the Bush administration to orchestrate a bailout of the airlines while his wife was an airline industry lobbyist. And after 9/11, Daschle thwarted Russ Feingold’s attempts to put civil liberties amendments in the PATRIOT Act.
Hilzoy of the Washington Monthly thinks she sees a silver lining to this dark Daschle cloud: Obama was willing to sacrifice Daschle, a mentor and personal friend whom Obama had handpicked for two of the most important jobs in his administration, someone he had every personal and political reason to want by his side. Maybe Obama really is serious about raising ethical standards in Washington?
One of Obama’s first acts in office was to sign an executive order tightening restrictions on lobbyists joining the executive branch. Daschle was a lobbyist in all but name, he even worked for the lobbying firm Alston & Bird. Daschle’s back taxes were a big problem, but Tim Geithner was confirmed as Treasury Secretary despite having owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes. What made Daschle’s position untenable was the fact that he’d accrued his undeclared income as a crypto-lobbyist for interests he hoped to regulate. That’s exactly the revolving door Obama pledged to block.
Passing the stimulus bill will be the first step towards reforming healthcare. First off, that mammoth bill has to pass before Obama and the Senate can focus on anything else. Also, the stimulus offers short-term life support for the programs that many hope will form the basis for a universal healthcare system–billions of dollars to help states maintain healthcare services in the face of shrinking revenues. We can’t expect to expand Medicaid to cover everyone before we help the states run the programs they’ve already got.
Obama campaigned on promises of sweeping change. The honeymoon is over and the public is eager to see if he can deliver on ethics and healthcare reform.
In other healthcare news, Martha Rosenberg of AlterNet reports on the shady backstory of how Risperdal, a drug meant for treating rare psychiatric disorders, became the seventh best-selling medicine in the world. In Mother Jones, Maia Szalavitz notes with grim satisfaction that the economic downturn is putting abusive “tough love” and “troubled teen” franchises, such as the notorious Tranquility Bay program in Jamaica, out of business.