The Next Hurrah

Public Opinion And Public Pressure

by DemFromCT

Not the same thing, of course. Now that AP- Ipsos has weighed in, along with CNN, USA/Gallup, WaPo, and Ny Times/CBS, it's helpful to look at the trends and analysis Prof. Charles Franklin has pulled to gather at pollster.com and his home at Political Arithmetik. Franklin helps explain (at least in part) the cognitive dissonance seen in today's headlines. For example, there's

AP Poll: Most See Iraq War As Failure The public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll suggesting the tough sell President Bush faces in asking Congress and voters for more time.

The pessimism expressed by most people — including significant minorities of Republicans — contrasted with the brighter picture offered by Gen. David Petraeus. The chief U.S. commander in Iraq told Congress on Monday that the added 30,000 troops have largely achieved their military goals and could probably leave by next summer, though he conceded there has been scant political progress.

By 59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success. Those calling it a failure included eight in 10 Democrats, three in 10 Republicans and about six in 10 independents, the poll showed — ominous numbers for a president who hopes to use a nationally televised address later this week to keep GOP lawmakers from joining Democratic calls for a withdrawal.

contrasted with [FL]

Area lawmakers interpret testimony differently
Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, is a member of the Armed Services Committee. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Gus Bilirakis
The bottom line: encouraging news.

Kathy Castor
The bottom line: It's time to come home

Rather than picking apart the individual polls, take a look at these trends (click for bigger pic) Prof. Franklin has put together.

Franklin astutely notes:

Bottom line: Frustrated anti-war forces are understandably angry that the 2006 election victory and subsequent Democratic Congress has failed to bring change to Iraq policy. The trend lines above show how support for the war has declined dramatically since 2003. Anti-war forces can correctly point to substantial majorities who are critical of various aspects of the war.

But change in Congress also requires that Republican members perceive that opinion against the war is so overwhelming that it is time for them to also abandon ship. That mark in public opinion has not been reached. So long as a substantial minority (say 40%+) support the current policy (or at least oppose a rapid withdrawal) then Republicans can count on a public that is too divided on the issue to pose the certainty of electoral catastrophe. This isn't to say Republicans don't wish the issue would go away, or that they relish running in 2008 with nearly 6 years of inconclusive war on their watch. But opponents of the war will not prevail in Congress unless a more massive opposition emerges--- and one united on the specific details of how to end the war.

Franklin notes that there are three groups here, those who want to stay the course, those who want out asap and everyone else, roughly in thirds (something we have noted here as well). However, Franklin points out out that rejection of Bush (blue line) is greater than accepting the war as a mistake (purple line). This is why Bush needs Petraeus to be the front man (and why we need to be clear that this is the unpopular Bush's unpopular war). What the cautious Prof. Franklin doesn't note is that 'rapid withdrawal' is not the same as "deliberate withdrawal" or "responsible withdrawal" or withdrawal with honor" or whatever the heck you want to call it. The 'swing vote', if you want to put it that way favors withdrawal and is just as fed up as the rest of us about how things are going both in Iraq and in the country as a whole.

What will happen is that the GOP and their shills will push the line that 'the President got what he want'. That's all smoke and mirrors. The conflicting independent reports preceding yesterday led to a rather lackluster set of media reports about the Petraeus hearing. GOP congresspeople have to be disappointed their cover is as thin as it is in preparation for Mr. Clinch-The-Deal's Presidential address. Bush runs the risk now of driving away any waverers in his next inarticulate defense of  "stay the course" (see graph - he is wildly mistrusted on Iraq).

The public opinion trends are not going to be reversed (see Matthew Dowd):

In the public's mind, the Iraq War was a mistake, and continuing the status quo is simply continuing on with a mistake. As a result, most Americans now view the situation in Iraq as a "rearview" mirror issue -- meaning that the public believes it is time to focus on the process of ending our involvement and getting out quickly. They see American troops as targets in a place we aren't wanted, and they desire a plan which achieves responsible withdrawal in the quickest and safest way.

That's why Republican Jim Walsh (NY-25) is breaking with the President, and that's why, sooner or later, others will too.

crossposted at Daily Kos

A Reminder About H5N1 and Pandemics

by DemFromCT

While it doesn't make news here, because it's not American deaths or a change from a simmering baseline, H5N1 still percolates in hot spots like Indonesia's Bali. Several resources help illustrate the problem. This map from Bali, Indonesia, where 1.5 million tourists from all over the world visit each year, tracks suspected cases of H5N1. It's put together by volunteers at Flu Wiki:


While a suspected case is not a proven case, not all samples in Indonesia make it to authorized labs for verification, and some of the suspects might have been placed placed on tamiflu, which is suspected of negating accurate testing. While the total number of cases is likely more than official counts, at this point it's not much more. There's no immediate pandemic happening, but H5N1 remains a candidate for one.

Also, a recent acknowledgment of human to human transmission in Indonesia (one of the human hot spots along with Egypt and Vietnam) highlights the need for vigilance.

A new study by a US university has apparently confirmed for the first time that bird flu has been transmitted from human to human.

It is the nightmare possibility that health authorities have been fearing ever since the disease first appeared.

It happened in Indonesia last year and reveals the world only narrowly avoided a global bird flu pandemic.

The World Health Organization and other international (that's international, including the US) agencies continue to plan and monitor:

The World Health Organisation warned Monday against complacency in the fight against bird flu, saying another human influenza pandemic is inevitable sooner or later.

"I am often asked if the effort invested in pandemic preparedness is a waste of resources," director general Margaret Chan told a regional meeting of the world organisation.

"Has public health cried wolf too often and too loudly?" she said in a speech.

"Not at all. Pandemics are recurring events. We do not know whether the H5N1 (avian influenza) virus will cause the next pandemic. But we do know this: the world will experience another influenza pandemic sooner or later."

WHO regional director Shigeru Omi noted that bird flu deaths in the Western Pacific -- which excludes Indonesia -- had fallen from 19 two years ago to five in the past year.

But he said the virus was still "entrenched" in several countries.

"Because the virus continues to evolve and mutate, we must maintain constant vigilance," he said.

This isn't a front page story, but it's information nonetheless worth posting. H5N1 is not guaranteed to be the next pandemic, but some flu virus out there will be, and there's nothing to say H5N1 won't be.

This fall, the focus will be on community mitigation guidelines and implementation. This means that if a severe pandemic strikes, the public schools in the US may close for up to 12 weeks. Pre-planning is essential for parents and employers. The focus will be on what's called COOP (continuity of operations planning) for individualsand communities.

Expect to hear more in coming weeks. While it's not the number one problem in the world today, it's certainly on the list of potential disasters, and mitigating disasters in advance is certainly a better idea than playing catch-up.

What Happens Next

by DemFromCT

Karen DeYoung has two fact-checking stories in the WaPo today on progress in Iraq. The page 1 story is about how the Iraqi army is not ready to step up, and the page 16 story is about the contradictory and confusing stats on violence (see emptywheel's take on the page 16 story):

Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq
Military Statistics Called Into Question

The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration's claim that its war strategy is working. In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks. According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease.

Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers -- most of which are classified -- are often confusing and contradictory. "Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.

The bottom line is that no matter how the PR campaign plays out, the public has already made its mind up about the war. Hard core Republicans still support it (hence the war dance at the Republican mating ritual in NH), but they don't represent a majority. So here's the new Conventional Wisdom, via Carl Leubsdorf writing in the Dallas Morning News (and acknowledging the CNN poll).

Meanwhile, the administration's effort to turn glimmers of progress into a steady light at the end of the tunnel faces the reality checks of independent observers. For example, though officials claim progress on half of the 18 benchmarks Congress set, the independent Government Accountability Office this week reached a far more pessimistic conclusion. It said the Baghdad government has met only three of the 18 with partial progress on four others.

In the end, the spate of claims and counterclaims about conditions in Iraq may offset one another, creating public confusion and leaving Congress and the public in a stalemate about the war. Public attitudes, after all, have been relatively unchanged for years.

But unless Mr. Bush and his supporters can succeed in changing the prevailing majority view that favors ending the war as soon as possible, even his ability to stage upbeat events in Iraq and win periodic fights in Congress won't give Republicans a positive terrain on which to fight the 2008 campaign.

While Larry Craig is doing his best to highlight ongoing Republican scandals, there's little good news out there in what even Republican and conservative observers describe as a bleak picture. The fundamentals aren't changing, and Republicans remain on the wrong side of the issues, including the sectarian civil war in Iraq. So far, at least, they've done nothing to take Iraq off the table for 2008. It's the reason that the fact-checkers have so much work to do whenever anything comes out of the Republican spin machine. And it's the reason predictions about the war being less of an issue in the next election are so much hot air.

Basra Withdrawal: Read It There, Read It Here

by DemFromCT

The NY Times has a story on the British pull-out, as it makes it way into American press coverage.

The British Army began withdrawing from its last base in Basra’s city center early Monday, a move that will leave Iraq’s second-largest city without foreign forces for the first time since the American-led invasion in 2003.

That's the story, but what's missing from the Times is the allied criticism found in the Brit papers. From the Times (UK):

The pullout came as two of Britain’s most influential generals during the Iraq war delivered scathing attacks on the Americans for their handling of the campaign after Saddam’s defeat. Major-General Tim Cross, who supervised reconstruction projects alongside his American counterparts in 2003, joined General Sir Mike Jackson [see Meteor Blades' post], former head of the Army, in criticising the US for ignoring British advice. General Cross, a Royal Engineer, is retired but he was a hugely respected figure in the Army and had unrivalled experience in dealing with postwar nation-building. He revealed that he gave advice to Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, about the size of the force needed to tackle the challenges after Saddam’s downfall, but was ignored.

The attacks by General Jackson, the former Chief of the General Staff, in his autobiography, and General Cross, in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, have laid bare the anger felt by the British military over the way that Mr Rumsfeld dismissed all the warning signs of a potential disaster in Iraq.

Although much has been said about the failures of the American strategy in Iraq, not least by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former British Ambassador at the United Nations and later Tony Blair’s special envoy to Baghdad, the strong criticism from the two generals has added to the growing sense of a rift between Washington and London.

This second criticism by a top British general can be found in AP, CNN and WaPo reports from the last twenty-four hours. Reuters adds why this is all surfacing now:

The unusually outspoken comments by former top military men follow weeks of commentary, mainly in the U.S. press, suggesting British forces have failed in southern Iraq and are set to flee.

Defence analyst Charles Heyman told Reuters the criticism was surfacing "because everybody realises this is now a failed policy and they are all casting around for scapegoats".

"Why didn't someone resign at the time and say this is foolish and foolhardy?" he said.

He said the recriminations were not helpful to future military and diplomatic relations between Washington and London, which have traditionally boasted of a "special relationship".

Why, indeed? As Republicans continue to lead American policy over a cliff with the justification that as bad as the disastrous policy is, any other approach would be worse (trust us!), it is worth a reminder that it has never been the unanimous view of the generals, at least when they speak their mind. But the Bush administration is not above blaming our allies for problems of their own making (and the Brits have some suspicions he will). After all, this Administration never takes responsibility for anything they've done, and blaming others is the one thing they do well.

More Failure In Iraq

by DemFromCT

Yet another report documenting benchmark failures. From the WaPo:

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

This joins the NIE (Report Offers Grim View of Iraqi Leaders) as official analysis of progress in Iraq, before the WH-written "Petraeus Report" is issued (and kudos for the WaPo for calling it what it is).

You have to appreciate this part:

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

Is it any wonder that the public doesn't trust the WH to report honestly? Members of Congress, take note.

[UPDATE]: Thanks for the comments! Let's carry on the conversation here.

Coverage Of The British Pull-Out in Basra

by DemFromCT

The British press has had stories about this, but the American press has been relatively quiet about this story. From the AP via IHT:

BASRA, Iraq: Shiite militiamen from the Mahdi Army took over the police joint command center in Basra on Sunday after British soldiers withdrew from the facility and handed control to the Iraqi police, witnesses said.

Police left the building when the militiamen, loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, arrived, the witnesses said.

The British military disputed the reports, saying they had been in contact with the Iraqi general in charge of security in Basra, who has said the Mahdi Army was not there.

But the witnesses said the Mahdi Army emptied the building — taking generators, computers, furniture and even cars, saying it was war booty — and remained there in the early evening.

The British military had maintained a small number of soldiers at the command center to help train Iraqi police.

There's, of course, more to the story, as the Brit press notes. From the Independent:

"Who Lost Iraq?"

by DemFromCT

That's the question James Dobbins asks in his intriguing article in Foreign Affairs (full article here at RCP). Dobbins served in both the Clinton and Bush II administrations, and takes a dim view of finger pointing, including at the military brass and the press.

Given the lack of receptivity to alternative views at the top, how much blame should be shouldered by people lower down who knew better and failed to speak up or who spoke up but failed to resign when their objections were brushed aside? Should the generals who revolted be condemned for awaiting retirement to lodge their protests? Should the nation foster a more critical climate within its military services, one in which officers are encouraged to challenge not only illegal orders but unwise ones as well?

Probably not. The military demands a higher degree of subordination, obedience, and discipline than other professions. Furthermore, civilian control of the military is an inviolable principle, which means that civilians should bear the chief responsibility when the military is misdirected.

If it is not the military's role to challenge lawful orders, still less is it the role of the press to manufacture controversy where none exists. In a democracy, the primary responsibility for opposing or at least critically examining the case for war falls on the opposition party. If the opposition chooses to duck that responsibility, as the Democrats largely did when the issue was put to them in late 2002, it is hard to fault the press for not stepping in to fill the void.

While refraining from criticizing individuals, there are suggestions for reforming institutions.

For the past 15 years, critical functions such as overseeing military and police training, providing humanitarian and reconstruction aid, and promoting democratic development have been repeatedly transferred from the State Department to the Defense Department and back again, leaving each agency uncertain what its long-term responsibilities are and consequently disinclined to invest in improving its performance. An executive order defining such roles, as Gates has proposed, would probably not outlast the administration that issued it. The national security establishment thus needs a legislated reorganization so that it can better conduct postwar stabilization and reconstruction missions, just as the Goldwater-Nichols Act over 20 years ago reorganized the military establishment to more effectively wage war.

Recognizing terror as predominantly criminal, and preemption as having failed, Dobbins suggests

The "war on terror" should be reconceived and renamed to place greater emphasis on its police, intelligence, and diplomatic components. The U.S. Army should continue to improve its counterinsurgency skills, with a particular emphasis on training, equipping, and advising others to conduct such campaigns. The United States should avoid allowing al Qaeda and its ilk to dictate its alignment in any particular dispute, should take sides when necessary based on an objective calculation of national interests, and should directly engage U.S. troops in local civil wars only in the rarest of circumstances. "Preemption" should be retired from the lexicon of declared policy, democratization should be pursued everywhere as a long-term objective in full recognition of its short-term costs and risks, and nation building should be embarked on only where the United States and its partners are ready for a long, hard, and expensive effort.

But perhaps one of the more fascinating points made is the willingness to lay out this concept:

Above all, Americans should accept that the entire nation has, to one degree or another, failed in Iraq. Facing up to this fact and drawing the necessary lessons is the only way to ensure that it does not similarly fail again.

He's not the only analyst or pundit willing to stand up to the scare tactics of the neocons and call it as he sees it. Jim Hoagland in the WaPo wrote this:

For Americans, the most important comparison will be this one: As Vietnam did, Iraq has become a failure even on its own terms -- whatever those terms are at any given moment.

This whole idea of pushing "victory" and "success" while avoiding "defeat" and "failure" when it occurs has become a staple of WH and their allies' rhetoric. For that reason, it's always interesting to see the terms "defeat" and "failure" used by pundits, despite the intimidation tactics used by the Republicans (while they insist "defeat is not an option", as if we could blithely choose our realities, here's use of the word by Ignatius: "While the Iraq part of the story still has to play itself out, the new approach isn't premised on success there but the possibility of failure.") Of course, that's not news to the American people.

Most people in the United States believe the coalition effort will be recalled in a negative light in the future, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 57 per cent of respondents think the mission in Iraq will be seen as a failure in the long run, while 29 per cent think the war will be deemed a success (related Rasmussen poll here)

It suggests that the public, usually ahead of the pundits and always ahead of the politicians, isn't alone any more. And thinking through what to do next so as not to repeat the mistakes of Iraq, as Dobbins attempts to do, is a worthy goal. However, it does require a careful look at future ventures.

Preemption, democracy promotion, and nation building have all been sullied by association with the war in Iraq. All three policies deserve reexamination, but none should be jettisoned entirely.

That's controversial enough without WH intimidation to avoid thinking through the consequences of failure.

Certainly, reevaluation of the reality of the Iraq situation is called for. Part of that reality is that only political pressure will make that happen. As Dobbins points out, it takes Democrats to make that happen. And September, after all, is only a week away.

Rudy's Frontrunner Status

by DemFromCT

An interesting NY Times piece today by Michael Cooper highlights the camapign's distorting the Giuliani fiscal record as NYC mayor (so that he doesn't have to rely solely on his dismal WTC health record).

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he "turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus."

The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

"He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor," Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. "The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do."

This ties in with a recent Gallup analysis, featured on pollster.com. Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Given the advanced start to the 2008 presidential campaigns, one of the uncertainties hanging over the process has been the degree to which voter preferences for the Democratic and Republican nominations might change as some of the candidates inevitably become more familiar to the public. Do the early frontrunners have a greater chance of being overtaken than early frontrunners in previous elections?

The bottom line is this, as summarized by pollster. com:

Saad's analysis is well worth reading in full, but here is the gist: Slightly less than half (46%) of Republican's nationally know Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson well enough to rate all four. Among these voters, Giuliani trails Fred Thompson by eight points (33% to 25%). Giuliani's double digit national lead in Gallup's polling comes entirely from the 54% of Republicans who are unfamiliar with one of the top four candidates (bolded mine)...

Among Democrats, the pattern is different. Less than one in four Democrats (23%) is not yet familiar with each of the three best known candidates, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. While Clinton holds a very wide lead over Barack Obama (53% to 17%) among those who are unfamiliar with one of the candidates, she still leads by a comfortable 13 point margin (43% to 30%) with Edwards finishing a distant third (with 13%) even among those who know all three candidates.

Severe Seasonal Flu in Australia And Health Infrastructure In The US

by DemFromCT

Did you know that there's a flu outbreak in Australia that's tying up their medical system in knots? And that six kids and nine adults have died? That's what happens in a bad flu season.

The figures, provided by the federal Department of Health and Ageing today, are believed to be just a fraction of actual flu infections, but they give the best seasonal comparison.

They offer official confirmation that the nation is in the grip of its worst influenza season in many years, with nine lives lost so far.

Six children from four states have died from one of two virulent strains of influenza A virus, H3N2 or H1N1.

Three adults – a 37-year-old Queensland man, a 48-year-old woman from South Australia and a 33-year-old Queensland mother-of-two – have also died after suffering flu-like symptoms.

Severe flu seasons can be as bad or worse than a mild pandemic. Here's a post from our colleague Revere, one of the epidemiologists at Effect Measure, the pogressive public health blog, outlining exactly that. From Effect Measure:

Given our posts (here, here) on the particularly severe flu season in Australia, we thought it useful to remind ourselves that a bad flu season can be really bad -- worse than the 1918 pandemic in some locations. Here is a post we did back in April 2006 about an interesting paper (see link in post) by Cecile Viboud and her colleagues at NIH that looks at historical records on flu mortality. Flu is a bad disease, pandemic strain or not. Why some flu is worse than others we don't know.

The hospital diversions and capacity overflow is a reminder that health issues in this country (not just Australia) need to be kept front and center as a priority. A bad flu season would overwhelm our own EDs

A [2002] study to be published in the April 2002 Annals of Emergency Medicine on emergency department use and capacity in California, sheds light on the overcrowding problem nationwide and provides the first objective data on this crisis in the United States. (Trends in the Use and Capacity of California's Emergency Departments, 1990-1999).

The study finds that in the past decade (1990-1999) emergency departments in California decreased by 12 percent, while the number of emergency department visits at each hospital increased 27 percent to about 25,778 annually.

and the efforts to prepare for a flu pandemic (whatever strain of virus) only highlight the health infrastructure issues here in the US that are every bit as ignored as crumbling bridges... until they collapse. To their credit, California is trying to address surge capacity issues in their hospitals. Is that happening in other states, with backing from the legislatures?

The SCHIP program's proposed expansion to cover underinsured children (and Bush's virulent and mean-spirited opposition) is in the news now, and other health care issues need to stay in the news through the primaries and right up to the election. Government has an important role in rebuilding our health infrastructure, and we need to make sure the candidates from both parties articulate what they see that role as.

From universal health care coverage to single payor alternatives to mental health coverage to SCHIP and children's insurance, there needs to be a question about health care and public health in every debate from here on in, both for the GOP and for the Democrats. America needs to know what alternatives they have when they go to the voting booth, and what the alternatives will cost (nothing is free). GOP reliance on private sector alternatives need to be highlighted and explored (See Gene Sperling's evaluation of SCHIP).

This election cycle, health and public health infrastructure cannot be ignored, or it, too, will crumble under the ordinary stresses of a flu season (or worse). There's a reason SICKO had such an impact when it was released. And "no one could foresee..." will not be an acceptable answer.

Bush To America's Children: Drop Dead

by DemFromCT

Amazing.

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.

Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.

After learning of the new policy, some state officials said today that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children by imposing standards that could not be met.

Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey, said: "We are horrified at the new federal policy. It will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children."

The beef with SCHIP that Bush has? It interferes with private insurance. Forget about the fact that there are millions children currently uninsured, and millions more that are underinsured. Nothing could be clearer in terms of the priorities of this Administration.

To minimize the risk of such substitution, Mr. Smith said in his letter, states should charge co-payments or premiums that approximate the cost of private coverage and should impose "waiting periods," to make sure higher-income children do not go directly from a private health plan to a public program.

If a state wants to set its income limit above 250 percent of the poverty level ($51,625 for a family of four), Mr. Smith said, "the state must establish a minimum of a one-year period of uninsurance for individuals" before they can receive public coverage.

Gene Sperling adds analysis:

What is most inexcusable about the White House stance is what they don't say. They offer nothing -- no better idea, no alternative, no plan -- that has been shown to keep even a chunk of these 5 million to 6 million children from going to sleep every night without health insurance.

They are content to keep the status quo even with heartbreaking reports that uninsured infants with congenital heart problems are 10 times more likely to die because of delayed treatment than those with coverage.

Before, "compassionate conservatism" may have seemed like a political bumper sticker. Now it seems like the punch line of a sad joke, at the expense of millions of impoverished children. 

Once again, the White House, and Republicans, are on the wrong side of the health care issue, an issue the American people care deeply about. Where is Thomas Nast when you need him?