Political MoJo

Mojo - September 2010

Who Should Pay for Illegal Immigrants' Health Care?

| Thu Sep. 2, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Advocates for tighter immigration restrictions frequently rail against illegal immigrants for availing themselves of social services like education and publicly supported health care, arguing that they are overburdening taxpayers and utilizing scarce resources. They've succeeded in maintaining a ban on government health coverage for illegal immigrants, for instance, and have tried to implement more draconian measures on the state level.

But such measures haven't solved the political and ethical dilemmas of providing health care for illegal immigrants, which this New York Times story brings into focus. The Times piece explains how a public charity hospital in Georgia closed its outpatient dialysis clinic, only to displace some 60 uninsured illegal immigrants who need the treatment to survive. The charity hospital brokered a deal to cover about half the patients but only after a handful had died after being repatriated to Mexico. The Times explains:

Thirty-eight end-stage renal patients, most of them illegal immigrants, would receive the dialysis they need to stay alive at no cost under a rough agreement brokered Tuesday among local dialysis providers and Atlanta’s safety-net hospital, Grady Memorial... Grady, which receives direct appropriations from Fulton and DeKalb Counties, ultimately agreed on Tuesday to help pay for continuing dialysis for most of the immigrants. Others would be distributed among local dialysis providers as charity cases...

Five of the 13 patients who left for Mexico with assistance from Grady or the Mexican government have died, according to Matt Gove, a Grady senior vice president. Most died while still receiving dialysis, although not always as regularly as recommended... One patient, Fidelia Perez Garcia, 32, apparently succumbed in April to complications from renal failure after running out of Grady-sponsored treatments in Mexico.

However you slice it, there isn't an easy answer. Even if Grady hospital pulled all support for such dialysis patients, they would still end up in emergency rooms where they would be required by law to receive treatment. And if they couldn't pay, taxpayers would still end up footing part of the bill, as hospitals pass on such costs to state governments.

[Read more]

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We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for September 2, 2010

Thu Sep. 2, 2010 2:00 AM PDT

Iraqi and US flags decorate the entrance to Al Faw Palace on Baghdad’s Camp Victory, welcoming dignitaries and guests to the USF-I change of command ceremony, on Sept. 1, 2010. Photo via the US Army by Lee Craker.

More Ominous Signs for Dems

—By Nick Baumann

| Wed Sep. 1, 2010 11:21 AM PDT

Signs continue to proliferate that 2010 will be a very, very bad election year for Democrats. The latest poll of the Ohio Governor's race—a contest I have pointed to as a bellwether—has incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland down 10 points to former GOP congressman John Kasich. The poll by Public Policy Polling (Daily Kos' pollster) has Kasich at 50 percent, with Strickland at 40 and 10 percent undecided. That's a terrible position for an incumbent to be in on September 1.

Meanwhile, the Dems seem to have already lost Senate races that in any other year should be close-fought contests. Two top Dem recruits—Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan—are trailing flawed, Bush-tied opponents Rob Portman (Bush's budget director) and Roy Blount (a longtime member of the Bush-era House GOP leadership). Neither Fisher nor Carnahan has led in a single poll for months. In New Hampshire, Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes is having similar trouble with GOPer Kelly Ayotte, a former* state attorney general. These are all open-seat races for Republican seats, and the Dems don't seem likely to flip a single one. That means the Republicans can move their focus elsewhere, to states like Washington, Wisconsin, and California, where Sens. Patty Murray, Russ Feingold, and Barbara Boxer, three important liberal votes, face very tough races.

Finally, the latest polling on the generic congressional ballot (i.e., would you rather vote for a Republican or Democratic candidate) gives the GOP their biggest lead ever. As SwingState's James L. writes, "Ted Strickland has run a good campaign, but he can't make the weather."

*I corrected this per comments.

Will Labor Day Gridlock Hurt the Dems?

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Wed Sep. 1, 2010 7:34 AM PDT

This weekend congressional Democrats may rue the day that they required states to put up big promo signs on road construction projects telling drivers that it was funded by the stimulus. That's because, according to the Wall Street Journal, the record number of stimulus-funded road construction projects are threatening to cause huge traffic jams in lots of major metro areas around the country, potentially putting a serious damper on the last vacation of the summer for many travelers.

Joe White writes:

Roads and bridges need to be rebuilt and repaired, and in many parts of the country summer is the best time to get the work done. This year, the normal hassles of dodging construction delays have been exacerbated by some 12,000 or more highway projects funded by the federal stimulus program.

More travelers will be on the road, too. Compared with 2009, when the recession-era travel buzz word was "staycation," the number of people taking a significant trip this weekend is expected to be up nearly 10%, auto club AAA predicts. Gas is under $3 a gallon, on average, so it's no surprise that an estimated 9 out of 10 of those travelers will likely be doing exactly what I plan to do: Driving a long way in their cars.

The traffic jams couldn't come at a worse time for Democrats. Already they are heading into the final stretch of this year's midterm election campaign season facing a host of grim polling numbers suggesting that they could lose not just the House, but the Senate too. But those polls are based on data from calls conducted BEFORE millions of American hit the road this weekend. Now, instead of winning kudos for creating jobs with all those road construction projects, Democrats could suffer the wrath of millions of Americans who got stuck in traffic. After all, thanks to the big signs on the road, all those Americans mired in endless traffic jams will know exactly who to blame for their troubles.

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