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American Retirees Move To Mexico For Health Care

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Sep 1, 2009 at 4:20 pm

movingNativists and anti-health care reform activists often warn that health care reform would “lure more immigrants” into the US, but they don’t mention that the nation’s current health care system is motivating many US citizens to leave. USA Today reports that thousands of American retirees have crossed the Southern border to sign up for a health care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS).

Mexican immigrants to the US are, for the most part, economic migrants whose primary concern is (and likely always will be) finding work. However, the broken US health care system has been driving American retirees who are less worried about finding jobs, and more concerned about staying healthy to Mexico where they can enroll in “a health care plan with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work — all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year.” There are approximately between 40,000 and 80,000 U.S. retirees currently living in Mexico. “It was one of the primary reasons I moved here. I couldn’t afford health care in the United States…To me, this is the best system that there is,” said one retiree who now lives in Sonora.

Many citizens of immigrant-sending countries have better access to health care at home than they would in the US, but that also doesn’t mean that they will flood the borders if the US health care system significantly improves. The big difference is that American retirees are eligible for IMSS benefits, while subsidized health care won’t even be on the table for most foreigners who might consider migrating to the US. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for credits or subsidies under the current House and Senate health care bills and legal immigrants have to wait five years to receive any benefits. Irrespective of whether they are covered or not, health care is usually a secondary concern for most migrants who are more worried about being able to simply put food on the table.

Politics

Gonzales backs Holder’s torture investigation.

By Amanda Terkel on Sep 1, 2009 at 4:16 pm

gonzalespin In an interview with the Washington Times today, former attorney general Alberto Gonzales defended Eric Holder’s decision to investigate CIA interrogation abuses, despite claims by Vice President Cheney that it is an “outrageous political act.” “As chief prosecutor of the United States, he should make the decision on his own, based on the facts, then inform the White House,” said Gonzales, whose tenure was marked by intense political meddling on the part of White House officials. More from the interview:

We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists. And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it’s action in prosecuting the war on terror.

Listen here:

Of course, Gonzales said he was reassured that Holder was interested the “one percent of actors” who went beyond the legal authorization and not the 99 percent who “are heroes and and should be treated like heroes for the most part.” No doubt that Gonzales puts himself in that 99-percent group.

Culture

Rubio to Barcelona

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 1, 2009 at 3:58 pm

200px-rickyrubio1

DKV Joventut’s teen sensation Ricky Rubio will be traded to FC Barcelona rather than joining the Minnesota Timberwolves as the fifth pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. This is mostly being spun as a bad thing for the ‘wolves and possibly even a tactical error by Minnesota. One factor in Rubio’s decision to stay in Spain is that the bill for buying out his contract with Joventut would have been prohibitively expensive. Thus Bill Simmons speculates that Rubio would have paid for the buyout to join a bigger market team where he could have earned more endorsement bucks and thus afforded the buyout: “Rubio needed big market endorsement $$$ to buy out other deal. LA-NY-Chi-Hou-etc. Minny couldn’t work. Kahn messed up. Shoulda flipped him.”

I think this whole line of thought is a mistake. Minnesota benefits from Rubio’s decisions. In general, basketball players are considerably better at 20 than at 18. Thus, in general you’d rather draft 20 year-old players rather than 18 year-old players. The problem, however, is that players with obvious promise enter the draft at 18 so unless you want to pass up on tons of talented guys, you often need to draft teenagers. Under the circumstances, for your teen draft pick to decide he wants to spend two years getting bigger and stronger while honing his skills in one of the world’s top leagues is a good thing. Maybe over the next two seasons Rubio will prove to be a bust, in which case no loss for Minnesota. Or maybe he’ll play well, in which case he’ll come to Minnesota in 2011, and the Timberwolves will get to have the 20, 21, and 22 year-old versions of Rubio on their roster for the rookie salary scale.

Security

Holder’s Decision To Re-Investigate Torture Is Correct

By Guest Blogger on Sep 1, 2009 at 3:40 pm

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

ap_eric_holder_081119_mnIn an op-ed in Saturday’s New York Times, novelist Joseph Finder charged that Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to appoint career prosecutor John Durham to begin a preliminary investigation into allegations of homicide and torture made by the CIA Inspector General “serves to delegitimize our government.” Finder claims Holder recklessly overturned the conclusion of the Alberto Gonzales-led Justice Department to close the criminal inquiry in a move that “doesn’t look much like justice; it looks like politics.”

It was a hallmark of the Bush administration to conflate politics and justice, but even on those terms, Finder has a peculiar understanding of the rule of law. Torture and murder by U.S. government officials is what has “delegitimized our government.” Far from any effort by the attorney general to enforce the law, the failure to investigate those crimes is what would cause further grievous harm to our country.

It’s disappointing that some have been persuaded by Finder’s allegations because they don’t withstand even minimal scrutiny. He accused Holder of being unconcerned that “these cases were exhaustively reviewed,” prior to the decision to close the first criminal investigation. And he also claims that “[i]f any new information has come out about these cases, any complaints about undue influence or any new witnesses, Mr. Holder hasn’t mentioned it.”

But the very first lines of Holder’s statement announcing the preliminary investigation read:

The Office of Professional Responsibility has now submitted to me its report regarding the Office of Legal Counsel memoranda related to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. I hope to be able to make as much of that report available as possible after it undergoes a declassification review and other steps. Among other findings, the report recommends that the Department reexamine previous decisions to decline prosecution in several cases related to the interrogation of certain detainees.

Finder obviously overlooked Holder’s actual statements in a rush to pass judgment on his motives. But it is simply willful ignorance to believe that it is “unlikely” that “high-level officials in the George W. Bush administration put their thumbs on the scale of justice.”

Seriously? Wasn’t Gonzales forced to resign in disgrace after his involvement in politically motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys? Didn’t we just learn of Karl Rove’s push for criminal investigations to help Republican candidates in advance of the 2006 mid-term elections? Read more

Politics

Grassley: The ‘Only Way To Get A Bipartisan Agreement Is To Defeat A Democratic Proposal On The First Hand’

By Matt Corley on Sep 1, 2009 at 3:26 pm

grassleyisnothealthreform

Over the August recess, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), one of the three Republicans engaged in the “Gang of Six” health care negotiations, has repeatedly made public statements that have created deep doubts about his commitment to reaching a bipartisan deal on health care reform. Just yesterday, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein reported that Grassley sent out a fundraising letter requesting help in his effort to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’”

Now, Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports that on a conference call with Iowa radio reporters today, Grassley suggested that the only way to reach a bipartisan compromise would be to first defeat the current Democratic health care proposals:

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says there may be only one path Democrats can take to get Republicans to support for health care reform. “There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership and then, at that point, they’ll know the only way they’re going to get health care reform is bipartisan,” Grassley says.

In the past month, Grassley has been all over the place whenever he has attempted to describe how a bipartisan deal can be reached. On August 17, Grassley said that he was unwilling to vote for a “good” bill unless it got support from “more than four Republicans.” Days later, he told the Washington Post that “We ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes.” Last week, he said he wouldn’t vote for an “imperfect bill.”

Grassley has also repeatedly changed his “make-or-break issues” for a compromise. On August 19, he told National Review that he needed “no public option, no rationing, no government bureaucrats getting between doctors and patients, and tort reform.” The next day, he expanded the list in an interview with NPR, making it “No public option, no pay-or-play, no things that are going to lead to any rationing of health care, no interference with doctor-patient relationships, and tort reform.” In an interview with the AP yesterday, Grassley said that on instructions from the GOP, he has sought “no public option, no rationing and tort reform.”

The Wonk Room has launched “GrassleyWatch” — an effort to track Grassley’s health care misrepresentations and obstructions. Check it out HERE.

Update

Roll Call has more of Grassley’s quote, in which he said he was worried that the strategy of defeating Democratic proposals wouldn’t work, so he is continuing to talk to “Max Baucus and other Democrats trying to ward off such a role of the dice”:

“There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal in the first hand and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership. And then at that point, they’ll know the only way they’re going to get health care reform is bipartisan. But my position has been that if that strategy doesn’t work and the Democrats go ahead and establish a public option, for instance, or a play or pay as a way of putting an 8 percent tax on payrolls for people who don’t offer health insurance — and dozens of other bad things — including leading us to Canadian-style single payer plan, then, if the Democrats are successful in doing that, we’ll be stuck with that plan forever,” Grassley told reporters. “So I’ve been taking to Max Baucus and other Democrats trying to ward off such a role of the dice, and ward off any chance that we’d end up with a government-run, federalized health insurance program like Canada has.”

Yglesias

Pletka: We Need Victory Even Though We Don’t Know What It Is

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 1, 2009 at 3:14 pm

afghanistan1-278x300-1

Via Michael Cohen, Danielle Pletka offers up a nice summation of the vacuity of uber-hawk thinking about national security issues:

Worse still, for those who believe victory is worth achieving in Afghanistan, it’s not easy to pinpoint what victory looks like. It never has been. Nonetheless, Afghanistan has both strategic and moral value to the United States. And it is wise to remember that the price of failure is horribly high.

Look. If you’re going to say that the reason to do X and Y and Z is that X and Y and Z are necessary to achieve “victory” then you have to be able to say what “victory” means. If it’s not easy to pinpoint what victory looks like, then you have to try harder to pinpoint what victory looks like. If you can’t say what victory looks like, then you can’t ask us to do X and Y and Z in order to achieve it.

Economy

Chamber Of Commerce: Proxy Access ‘Represents An Unprecedented Takeover Of Our Markets’

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 1, 2009 at 2:48 pm

chamberlogoLast week, the Chamber of Commerce promised to launch an “all-out lobbying effort” against a Securities and Exchange Commission proposal implementing “proxy access,” which would even the playing field for shareholders looking to elect members to a company’s board of directors. And like so many of the Chamber’s recent campaigns, it seems that this one will be centered on raising the spectre of a government assault on capitalism that will destroy the economy. As Thomas Quaadman of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Market Competitiveness said:

If these proposals come to fruition, we will see a federalization of corporate law. It also represents an unprecedented takeover of our markets by the government…Some large activist investors (particularly union pension funds) see SEC-mandated proxy access as an important tool to get more leverage in the boardroom to push a political agenda. From our vantage point we believe that these misguided proposals will harm the American economy and constrain the ability of the business community to create jobs.

According to the Chamber, cap-and-trade, regulating greenhouse gases, the Employee Free Choice Act, creating a consumer protection agency, and health care reform are all going to wreck the economy, and proxy access now needs to be added to the list. But far from economic Armageddon, proxy access would return a bit of accountability to America’s system of corporate governance.

As I pointed out at New Deal 2.0, the current structure of corporate elections discourages accountability and encourages static boards that don’t have to answer to their shareholders. Now, in order to elect a board of directors, a company sends out a “proxy” with its preferred slate of candidates (with the cost billed to the company), while shareholders wishing to place someone on the board have to “pay up for mailing and publicity costs, sometimes in the millions of dollars,” to send out their own, separate ballot. Instead of this, the SEC wants to mandate that shareholders who hold 1 to 5 percent of a company’s shares (depending on the company’s size) for more than one year be able to put their candidates on the main ballot.

Without access to the proxy, shareholders find it exceedingly difficult to exert any pressure on management to curtail hefty bonuses and high-risk profit seeking that come at the expense of long-term growth, while studies have shown that boards with members elected by activist shareholders perform better in both the long- and short-term. The SEC’s proposal would increase corporate democracy, by giving shareholders the opportunity to hold their boards accountable for mistakes.

As Michael Corkery wrote at Deal Journal, the argument that the SEC’s proposal would increase the role of “big government” in the business world “seems a stretch.” Indeed, it appears that the Chamber is invoking the threat of Big Brother to cover its own partnership with the business community’s entrenched interests.

Politics

Crowd boos mention of Ted Kennedy at Rep. Schakowsky’s health care event.

By Amanda Terkel on Sep 1, 2009 at 2:43 pm

Josh Kalven of Progress Illinois went to Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s (D-IL) town hall meeting last night, “where over 2,000 people showed up, packing a high school auditorium and spilling onto the sidewalk outside.” One of the most disturbing moments of the event came right after the opening of Schakowsky’s introductory speech, when she said, “You know, Ted Kennedy had said that this was the great issue of his life.” Some audience members applauded her, but there were also a loud amount of booing…just days after Kennedy passed away. Watch it:

At a recent event in upstate New York, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) asked for a moment of silence to remember Kennedy. Many attendees shouted throughout the 10-second memorial.

Related Posts

Yglesias

Reconciliation May Push Health Reform to the Left

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 1, 2009 at 2:27 pm

US Capitol Building

US Capitol Building

The “public option” that’s been so vigorously debated at the moment is actually a pretty wimpy public objection. You could imagine a much more robust one that would do more to squeeze providers and cut down costs. But of course neither providers nor health insurance companies want that. And insurers have a lot of money, and providers—most notably doctors—have both money and political credibility. So instead most attention is focused on a somewhat wimpy public option and even that’s having a hard time gaining enough support in the Senate to pass. But Brian Beutler points out that going the reconciliation route might force a more left-wing version of the public option:

“A very robust public option that scores significant savings would presumably be easy to justify doing through reconciliation,” says a Senate Democratic aide. “But it is still being studied whether other, more moderate versions of a public option could pass parliamentary muster.”

According to Martin Paone, a legislative expert who’s helping Democrats map out legislative strategy, a more robust public option–one that sets low prices, and provides cheap, subsidized insurance to low- and middle-class consumers–would have an easier time surviving the procedural demands of the so-called reconciliation process. However, he cautions that the cost of subsidies “will have to be offset and if [the health care plan] loses money beyond 2014…it will have to be sunsetted.”

Of course the question then becomes of whether you could get 50 votes for that. A robust public option saves money so, naturally, deficit-averse “centrist” Democrats don’t like the idea. And, naturally, the press never seems to point that out.

Politics

Protester holds up a copy of the ‘U.S.S. Constitution’ to prove that Congress can’t regulate health care.

By Amanda Terkel on Sep 1, 2009 at 1:58 pm

One of the newest right-wing memes is that federal government doesn’t have the constitutional authority to enact health care reform. At a town hall protest in San Diego on Saturday, one attendee tried to make one of these “tenther” arguments by holding up a copy of the “U.S.S. Constitution’:

Right here. I got a book here called the U.S.S. Constitution. I’m sure everybody’s seen this before. And you know what? I’ve this book three times now, and I’ve referenced it dozens of times and I can’t find one little paragraph in here that says the government has the right to take over our health care.

Watch it:

TP’s Ian Millhiser — who has also read and referenced the Constitution a few times — notes that the Constitution gives Congress the power “‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’ thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues to benefit the American people.” (HT: TP reader Kevin)

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