Health Care for Illegals?

I know that everyone reading this was thinking what I was thinking when I first heard about this.

Fearful that they're losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access, The Washington Times reported on Monday.

The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party's spines on the contentious issue, say it's unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they've been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.

I know I was thinking that this idea is a total non starter. After all, the president categorically denied that illegals would be covered under the health care plan. In fact, he used his speech in front of the nation to call it a lie that illegal immigrants would be covered under his health care plan. So, any suggestion by any legislator that a final health care plan will cover illegals is a total nonstarter. After all, the president categorically denied that such a thing would ever pass.

So, we of course have nothing to worry about. This is going nowhere. In fact, I am sure the president will be on television immediately to say this is a non starter.

Now, the Democrats that support this are running a shell game. Their plan wouldn't call for the government to pay for their health insurance. It would merely allow an illegal to buy health insurance in the health care exchange. The logic behind this is that if someone has health insurance they are kept out of the emergency room. Now, let's take things one at a time. First, it's not entirely clear just how much of a burden those without insurance are on the health care system. The president says that families pay an extra $900 yearly for such services. Jacob Sullum wrote about this over the weekend and he cites a study that found something entirely different.

According to a 2008 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, both of those estimates are way off. The foundation’s analysis indicates that the true annual cost per family is more like $200, with uncompensated care accounting for “less than 1 percent of private health insurance costs.”

There is a much bigger cost that all those pushing this aren't accounting for. That's the cost of illegal immigration entirely. If illegals know that they can come here and get jobs, get health insurance, get loans, credit cards, cell phones, etc. there isn't much discouraging them to come here. The costs of illegal immigration are much higher than merely the health care costs. By providing illegals one more benefit of living in America, all we are doing is encouraging more illegal immigration into the country. We should be trying to do everything we can to discourage illegal immigration. That's the main reason everyone was so up in arms at the suggestion that illegals would be covered under the Obama plan. It's much more about the overall costs of illegal immigration and much less about the health care costs of illegal immigration.

It will be interesting to see how the president handles this. He was very firm in his stance that illegals wouldn't be covered. There is no way around that statement. If he doesn't immediately cme out and call this a non starter his credibility will take yet another hit. The last thing he needs right now in the health care debate is for the specter that illegals will be covered to float in the media for a few days.

Refereeing over Chaos

The New York Times has an interesting article about the current state of the health care bill in the Senate.

As the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, takes on the delicate task of melding two competing versions of major health care legislation, aides say he will lean heavily on President Obama to arbitrate a number of contentious issues that still threaten to divide liberal and centrist Democrats and derail a final bill.

Mr. Reid’s challenge is to stitch together legislation that can win 60 votes to stop a Republican filibuster. It must satisfy liberals demanding more generous subsidies and safety-net provisions for the middle class, without alienating centrist budget hawks or Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the only Republican who has indicated she might back the bill.

Democrats now control 60 seats in the Senate, with the appointment last week of Paul G. Kirk Jr. of Massachusetts as the interim successor to Edward M. Kennedy, who died in August. But the party is far from united on the health care issue, even though Mr. Obama has declared it his top domestic priority and has expended enormous political capital on getting a bill passed.

It's interesting mostly in the fantasy like predictions that the article makes for health care reform. For instance, the article predicts that the Baucus bill will make it out of committee by the end of the week. I'm not sure the bill will even make out of committee but it is very unlikely to make it out by the end of the week. The committee took half of Friday off and will take today off for Yom Kippur. Tomorrow the committee will take up the contentious Rockefeller/Schumer amendment to add in the public option into this bill. The current version has only a co op. The committee is about half way through more than 500 amendments, but the article predicts the bill will be ready for a vote by Friday.

Then, it engages in more fantasy when it predicts the Senate will merge all the bills into one and bring them to a vote by October 15th. Now, the House has been in the position the Senate will purport to be on Friday since before the break. There's no final bill to speak of yet.

Besides this, the article recounts what any astute observer already knows. There simply aren't the votes to pass it. Now, it doesn't say that. Instead, the article points out many differences between moderates and liberals.

To appeal to Ms. Snowe, as well as to centrist Democrats like Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, the combined bill would not include proposal for a government-run insurance plan, or public option, despite the clamoring of liberals who support it, senior Democratic Senate aides said.

...

The White House may also be asked to settle regional disputes, including disagreement over proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage, which offers extra benefits to some people 65 and older but often costs the government more than traditional Medicare.

“None of these decisions are going to be made without significant presidential input," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid.

So, by appealing to one group, the final bill will disenfranchise another. By doing so, all the final bill will do is lose two votes to gain one. There's so many issues of contention including the size of subsidies, the cost, cuts to Medicare, and who to tax among them. So, by the time the final bill is done appeasing everyone, no one is happy. That's been one of the problems all along. So many legislators have come forward with potential problems that there's too many constituencies to appease. Some are diametrically opposed to each other. It's total chaos.

Now, Harry Reid wants the president to figure it all out. That's simply wishful thinking. No one can figure this out. If you increase subsidies to appease the liberals, the costs become too much for the moderates to swallow. On the other hand, the liberals demand insurance mandates but don't want the poor and middle class to pay too much. You have to cut Medicare somewhere to pay for it. The liberals aren't too keen on Medicare Advantage so they want that cut. Yet, seniors like Medicare Advantage and so all legislators that represent a lot of seniors, a la Bill Nelson of Florida, are against those cuts. At the same time, the president has pronounced the bill must be revenue neutral. Good luck Mr. President in squaring that.

Beyond this, the new Rasmussen poll has support for health care reform at an all time low of 41%. Seniors support the bill at an astonishing 16%. This is the legislative version of the food fight scene in Animal House.


Like I said, good luck refereeing that Mr. President.

Bill Clinton and Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Bill Clinton was on Meet the Press once again talking about a vast right wing conspiracy.

Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him. You know, it's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did. … But … it's not really good for the Republicans and the country, what's going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down. They can run his opposition up. But, fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail.

My first thought is that President Clinton took nearly eight years of attacks on him personally. I didn't even see the video and I could tell the residual anger in his words. That's neither surprising and it's something that I can understand. After all, the attacks on him got very personal and they were sustained for nearly eight years. Deserved or not, President Clinton clearly took all the attacks very personally.

It's also yet another example that in politics we only notice vicious attacks when they come from the other side. President Clinton wasn't out there analyzing the vast left wing conspiracy when they did worse to President Bush than they did to him for eight years. With most of the media, academia, and hollywood squarely in the left, it's hard to see to see how there's a vast right wing conspiracy. Yet, that's all that President Clinton sees.

Both sides do this of course. There's a small strand of conservatives that are still convinced that President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. Yet, many of those same folks were mocking liberals who trotted out one conspiracy theory after another about why the Iraq war was started. That's because we always notice bad behavior from the other side a lot more quickly than we do from our own and from ourselves.

If there is a vast right wing conspiracy, then the conspiracy on the left is enormous. Yet, Bill Clinton only notices the one on the right and that's because it's only the right that attacked him personally for nearly eight years.

President Obama to Copenhagen

In a story being reported by ESPN and other outlets, President Obama has done a 180% turnaround and will now come to Copenhagen to pitch for Chicago to get the games.

President Barack Obama will travel to Denmark this week to support Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, told The Associated Press on Monday morning that Obama will leave Thursday and join his wife, Michelle, in Copenhagen, where they'll make the pitch to the International Olympic Committee.

Obama would be the first U.S. president to take on such a direct role in lobbying for an Olympics event.

This is not terribly surprising and something that I predicted largely. I, however, predicted that President Obama would make a surprise appearance in Copenhagen. I thought he was merely playing possum with the Committee and wanted to make a more grand entrance. Instead, it appears that he was simply waffling, as he tends to do. In any case, most experts thought the city of Chicago had no chance without Obama at Copenhagen. Now, the city is back in the game.

The much more interesting report is the one that's on the front of Drudge. This report claims that the local Fox affiliate was told to not re air a report about Chicagoans not wanting the Olympics. The Olympic Committee told WFLD 32, the local Fox affiliate, that this report would hurt the bid. A new group called Chicagoans for Rio has received some attention and a sort of cult following. Well, WFLD ran a report on this group and it appears that the Olympic committee told them not to do it again. (no embed available but video is available at the link)

That raises all sorts of questions about what the media in Chicago is doing. Their job is not to be a mouth piece for the bid, but rather to report the news. No Games Chicago is holding a rally tomorrow at 5:30 PM at City Hall (121 N. LaSalle locally). How much media coverage will that receive? It appears that it won't receive much. This news isn't just surprising but shocking. For the media to be told what they should and should not cover by an extension of the local government is something akin to the media arrangement in North Korea.

The media in Chicago has done nearly zero critical reporting of the Olympics. They've been little more than cheerleaders. Despite this, the latest Tribune poll has barely a majority of Chicagoans supporting the bid. Imagine what would have happened if the media in Chicago wasn't acting as a mouthpiece. If Fox capitulated they have a lot to answer for, however this particular story explains a lot about the way this story has been covered.

Morning Market Report

The markets are in a mini losing streak. The three major indices have lost for three straight days, and we'd better have an up day soon or the pundits and analysts may panic. Futures are pointing marginally this morning. All three indices are currently up slightly more than half a percent. They are riding a "wave of merger and acquisition activity" to higher opening this morning. Xerox is buying Affiliated Computer Services, Belgian drug manufacturer Solvay is buying a unit of Abbott, Johnson and Johnson is buying an 18% stake in Crucell a Dutch biotech firm, and there are reports that Kraft will launch a hostile bid for Cadbury.

Treasuries are taking a breather this morning but they are still in the midst of a rally. The ten year U.S. Treasury bond is currently at 3.33% up two basis point but that's up off lows over the last two months. Meanwhile, the spread between the two and ten year has also tightened significantly to 2.33%, as the two year bond has stayed relatively flat while the ten year has rallied. Oil continues to hover around $66 a barrel and it's currently at $66.27 a barrel.

Around the world, we had near mirror images of each other. In the Far East, stocks indices were universally down. The Hang Seng in China was down 2.37%, the NIKKEI in Japan was down 2.5%, and the Straits Time Index was down 1.26%. In Europe, the FTSE in London was up .88%, the DAX in Germany was up 1.52%, and the Spanish Index was up .89%.

The Dollar is mixed this morning. It's up by .27% against the Euro, up .6% against the British Pound but down .17% against the Japanese Yen.

Gates Closing GITMO "Harder Than Expected"

The administration is finally revealing to the public what most of us already knew. Yesterday, unnamed administration officials first revealed that GITMO will most likely still be open come January 22,2010, when it was scheduled for closure. Today, here's what Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said trying to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has proved more complicated than anticipated.

Gates said "it's going to be tough" for the president to meet his goal of shutting the prison in January. He said there are difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and resolving other issues.

Now, there are all sorts of things here that should trouble everyone. First, President Obama pronounced that he would close GITMO within a year on his second day on the job. Now, we find out that figuring out the logistics is proving to be "more complicated than expected". What was he expecting exactly? He'd been on the job for two days. There was no time for a review or a plan to get out. So, his expectations weren't based on any sort of legitimate analyis.

Second, the president has been using its impending closure as the subject of accomplishment in nearly every foreign policy speech. So, at the same time he privately knew that closing it was proving more difficult than expected, he was still telling the world that we should view its closure as a source of pride.

Third, we're all finding this out now. How long has the administration known that things were more difficult than expected? I point this out because this stance is two days old. For the first eight months, the administration put on a very confident face. No one ever gave one hint that there would be any problems. Now we learn that there were problems all along. So, while privately the administration saw a major problem coming, publicly they were telling the world everything was going according to plan.

So, let's review. The administration foolishly made a grand proclamation without doing even a hint of analysis. Then, they found out that reality was much more difficult than the utopia they were creating in their speeches. This didn't stop them from using this proclamation as a point of accomplishment. Meanwhile, privately they knew that they'd never close GITMO on time. Yet, they waited eight months to tell the world what most already knew.

Video, Quote, and Word of the Day

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One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present.
Stephen Covey