A new chart put out by the House Democratic Caucus compares the state of the country when President Bush took office to the state of the country today:

Click here for a larger version.

Via: Huffington Post
By Gerald McEntee AFSCME International President

If you’re following the politics of the Iowa Democratic caucus contest, you’re familiar with the dust-up surrounding Barack Obama’s health care plan, AFSCME’s critique of it, his labeling of union’s as “special interests” (as I read in a recent Paul Krugman column), the anti-government rhetoric the Senator has used to defend the absence of a mandate from his health insurance plan and the fact that it does not cover 15 million Americans.

Let’s start with Obama’s health insurance plan: it is the only “universal” health insurance proposal on the presidential trail that does not cover every American. The simple fact is that it leaves 15 million Americans without the medical care they need. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards’ plans do not leave anyone behind. This is the difference that the AFSCME political action committee has pointed out in the direct mail piece that the Obama campaign has been complaining about in the media.

What’s more, as Krugman has pointed out, Obama has used anti-government rhetoric to defend his position on health care and Social Security. In so doing, he makes the right-wing’s argument about public services and unions. This is unacceptable, especially at a time when it is so important to promote a vibrant trade movement.

People can debate the details of the candidate’s plans but the biggest difference that matters is that Barack Obama’s plan does not cover 15 million people. There are clearly different policy ways to achieve the goals of controlling costs and providing quality health care for all. But you can’t cover everyone if your plan does not even intend to do so.

AFSCME has fought for universal health care for decades. Our goal is simple: to protect and improve health care for those who have it, and to provide it for 47 million Americans who don’t. And we are hardly a “special interest” when it comes to this or any issue. As most people know, union members have bargained hard for affordable health insurance that provides high quality care. Our members have fought for these benefits for years and their contracts have helped to set the standard for what every American should have.

When it comes to health care, our union and the labor movement in general are not a “special interest.” We fight for the general interest. Our campaign for health care for all is about our commitment to a better America, and no one in America should go without the medical care they need as so many in our country do now.
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The New York Times
By Erik Eckholm

RALEIGH, N.C. — Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.

Two-thirds of those who appeal an initial rejection eventually win their cases.

But in the meantime, more and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration, which administers disability benefits for those judged unable to work or who face terminal illness.

The agency’s new plan to hire at least 150 new appeals judges to whittle down the backlog, which has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000, will require $100 million more than the president requested this year and still more in the future. The plan has been delayed by the standoff between Congress and the White House over domestic appropriations.

There are 1,025 judges currently at work, and the wait for an appeals hearing averages more than 500 days, compared with 258 in 2000. Without new hirings, federal officials predict even longer waits and more of the personal tragedies that can result from years of painful uncertainty.

Progress against the backlog, if it happens, cannot undo the three years that Belinda Virgil of Fayetteville, N.C., has worried about her future since her initial application was turned down.
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Think Progress

A new study by the University of California’s School of Public Health finds that illegal immigrants do not pose as significant a burden on U.S. Health Care resources as is often claimed. Undocumented immigrants are less likely to have insurance, but seek out health care in much lower numbers:

“Low rates of use of health-care services by Mexican immigrants and similar trends among other Latinos do not support public concern about immigrants’ overuse of the health care system,” the researchers wrote.

“Undocumented individuals demonstrate less use of health care than U.S.-born citizens and have more negative experiences with the health care that they have received,” they said.

The study is based on a 2003 survey of 42,044 people. Researchers compared the health care habits of U.S.-based Mexicans and Latinos and grouped the results according to citizenship or other status.

Among the other findings:

Undocumented Mexican and Latin American immigrants “are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California.”

Mexican Immigrants paid “1.6 fewer visits to doctors” per year than by those born in the U.S. to Mexican immigrants.

Other “undocumented Latinos had 2.1 fewer physician visits than their U.S.-born counterparts.”

Not only are undocumented immigrants not a burden on the U.S. health care system, but as Alexander N. Ortega, an associate professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health and the study’s lead author points out, they “seem to be underutilizing the system, given their health needs.”

– Dave de Give

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Yet another wrinkle in the McConnell-SCHIP smear. A couple hours ago Atrios linked to this report by local Kentucky station WHAS11 news. In it the station accused GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of misleading the network’s reporter when McConnell told him on camera a few days ago that his office played no role whatsoever in pushing the smear of SCHIP posterkid Graeme Frost and his family.

As you all know, the news broke today that McConnell’s communications director admitted in an interview with Kentucky’s Courier-Journal that he’d initially alerted reporters to the smear campaign being waged by the winger bloggers against the Frosts. For all the background on this, go here.

Now a Kentucky blogger has just posted some video of WHAS11’s report alleging that McConnell had misled them. In it you can watch WHAS11’s footage of an interview they did with McConnell on Friday, in which he adamantly denied any involvement from his office:

In it, the reporter directly asks McConnell whether his office was involved in any way:

MCCONNELL: Is there an indication that your office was trying to push reporters to go dig into this background?

REPORTER: Then what was the deal with the email?

MCCONNELL: What?

REPORTER: What was the deal with the email from your staffer?

MCCONNELL: There was no involvement whatsoever.

REPORTER: From your staff?

MCCONNELL: None.

As we now know, however, this is false.

From Firedoglake

As Jane announced earlier, the Blue America PAC, along with several other blogs/groups, is stepping into the breach to try to push the SCHIP votes over the top for a veto override. Why? Because America’s children deserve actual care, and not a bunch of pandering, hollow words of faux compassion and little, to no, real action from George Bush other than a big, fat “no help for you.”The Bush veto of the bipartisan compromise SCHIP bill was a cynical a political maneuver as they come — pandering to the worst elements of his wingnutty-conservative base while throwing common sense and decency out with the bathwater. As Howie says, these are the Dems in need of a serious nudge:

– Jim Marshall (D-GA)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-6531

– Baron Hill (D-IN)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-5315

– Gene Taylor (D-MS)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-5772

– Bob Etheridge (D-NC)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-4531

– Mike McIntyre (D-NC) –Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-2731

If you live in the district of any of these members of Congress, please contact them and tell them to vote for SCHIP and the kids who need healthcare in their districts. Chris Bowers at OpenLeft runs the numbers on all of this, and John Amato at Crooks and Liars is asking for your help as well.

As Digby says:

There’s a lot of talk these days, and books being written, about what it means to be a majority party Democrat living under the Big Tent. It requires coalition building and compromise and negotiation, for sure. But there are some issues that are so fundamental to what being a Democrat is, by definition, that if you don’t support them, you aren’t one. Health care for kids is one of those things — it’s simply not negotiable.

If you can spare a donation, we’d sure appreciate it for Blue America PAC. Any amount — from $5 to $500 and up – can help with this, as we try and push this forward. The DCCC is doing calls for Republicans who failed to vote the will of their constituencies on this. We didn’t think these DINOs should be left out.

Howie put together a list of targeted GOP House members. The vote on SCHIP is scheduled for October 18th. Please contact these folks between now and then and voice your support for SCHIP. We’ll be doing more on this as the week goes on, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up as to who needs an extra nudge. More from theLATimes, the CharlotteObserver, and the WaPo. The NYTimes has a patently offensive take, calling SCHIP a “wedge issue” for Democrats — no, sorry, it’s a moral issue for at risk children with bi-partisan support. Try again. Especially when you have folks like John Dingell weighing in that a veto-override is possible — we have momentum to build on with this, and we ought to use every bit of it to push health care for these children through.

Beerfart Liberal got a great LTE into the Orlando Sentinal on the issue — kudos! (And remember, you can send yours in as well — here are some helpful hints – every letter counts on this one, gang.) And Bill Scher has the rundown on the weekend GOP lie fest on the talking head shows — useful information here.

Video: Crooks and Liars has the full segment.

From Thursday’s show, Jon Stewart looks at the logic– or lack thereof — behind Bush’s veto of SCHIP.

[snip]

BUSH: …I believe in private medicine, not the federal government running the healthcare system…

STEWART: Yes, I don’t think there’s an uninsured kid out there who wants to be suckered into some slippery slope socialized medicine scheme. These kids don’t want the government telling them what they can or cannot die from. It’s just wrong.

Watch Video

Rachel Maddow makes Pat Buchanan’s head explode as she easily exposes the underbelly of conservative politics. If you’re poor and need help—you’re socialist scum—and screw your kids too.

There is no defending Bush’s veto over SCHIP and as you watch this fairly long clip you’ll see what conservatives like Pat really think about anyone that makes 60-80,000 dollars. I’d love to see Pat in a new reality TV show on VH-1. We’ll put him in an apartment in LA, with a wife and two kids and a 60,000 dollar salary and a dog named Larry Craig. Then we’ll watch him try to buy food and clothing and, most importantly, health care for his family and see what happens.

I’d like to know when was the last time Pat had to worry about an electric bill. These people make you feel embarrassed being an American. But then we have a Rachel Maddow to make us proud again. There really is no argument that he can make which seems rational.

October 1st came and went. Now, the budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs is officially late. Instead of working to get it passed, Congress is caught up in a furor over Rush Limbaugh’s latest comments and MoveOn.org’s most recent ad.

We need to break through the clutter. Last week we asked you to help us run a television advertisement calling on Congress and the President to approve the VA budget and get our veterans the care they need, and we had a great response.

If you haven’t contributed already, please give what you can now. Every contribution, from $5 to $500, has a huge impact. As an example, $138 pays for this ad to run once on a network that reaches 3.6 million homes in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.

We were originally planning on running the ads this week, but the media and the folks in Washington are focused almost entirely on partisan political bickering. In order to make your support as effective as possible, we’ve decided to run the ads starting next week instead. That gives us extra time to make sure these ads reach even more people.

Help us get the message out there. Put this advertisement on the air and tell Congress and the President to make veterans’ care a priority.

According to a report released last week by the investigative arm of Congress, the President and Congress have not done enough to strengthen our veterans’ care system. The report confirmed what we all learned during the February Walter Reed crisis - our veterans are facing unnecessary obstacles to receiving the care we all know they deserve.

The partisan infighting in Washington will continue. But people of all political persuasions should be able to unite to care for our newest generation of heroes.

Please take action today.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Paul Rieckhoff
Iraq Veteran
Executive Director
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America