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I’ll be around with the latest on the Wisconsin recall elections tonight. It should go down to the wire, with several close races. Turnout is heavy but also spotty. Polls close at 9pm ET (8pm CT).
• Claire McCaskill’s just being honest here. Congress isn’t going to pass a jobs bill. Now, McCaskill probably likes it that way, because she’s facing re-election and she doesn’t want to be put on the spot for some bill that spends money. But she’s just accurately playing pundit here. I wish Democratic politicians would play pundit less and advocate more.
• Syrian troops are pulling out of Hama, as President Assad rejects a new play from Turkey to end the repression of the uprising. Assad calls it a war against “militant Islamists” rather than peaceful protesters.
• Congressional Democrats filed Supreme Court briefs at variance with the President’s position on a case where Medicaid beneficiaries are challenging cuts made at the state level. This is a pretty important case.
• Stability watch: Libyan rebels dissolved their cabinet to placate the family of the top military commander who was slain by a rebel faction recently. US officials called this a sign of “reflection” and “renewal.” I would have went with “disarray.”
• Breaking: President plans to case opponent for the Presidency in a bad light. Unprecedented!
• Kind of a big deal: Ron Bloom is stepping down as the Administration’s manufacturing czar. He’s been one of the bright spots from a policy standpoint.
• You want some good news? The dollar is down. That’s good for US exports.
• More good news: the European Central Bank’s intervention to buy bonds from Spain and Italy so far appears to be holding.
• Michele Bachmann wants the President to call Congress off of recess so they can make a bunch of speeches and get nothing done. Meanwhile, she also threw her support to raising the Medicare eligibility age, the dumbest idea possible.
• Zach Carter returns to your video streaming screens to explain how Panama is one of the biggest tax havens in the world, and how a proposed free trade agreement with them would practically normalize tax evasion.
• The newer Medicaid beneficiaries will probably be sicker and therefore more expensive, at least to start (because most were previously uninsured). This is why you’re seeing more and more states looking into Medicaid managed care.
• Now Yemen’s news agency says that Ali Abdullah Saleh will return, even while the US wants him to stay put in Saudi Arabia.
• The Justice Department gets tough on for-profit colleges, filing a multi-billion-dollar fraud suit.
• Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) disavowed the Norquist anti-tax pledge at a town hall meeting. I assume he’ll walk back to Washington on his knees.
• The Era of Good Feelings wasn’t all that good. Discuss.
• The Congressional Black Caucus has a jobs tour much like the Progressive Caucus version. These voices are rarely heard by our leaders, but sadly, I’m not sure how to translate the voices into action at this time.
• This Bank of America investor call should be a hoot.
• Remember when the Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin, David Prosser, choked one of his colleagues on the court? There’s going to be a special prosecutor investigating the incident.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is a terrible person.
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I tend to doubt that Avalere study on the cost of new Medicaid beneficiaries. When you take out all the children, who are in any case cheap to cover, poor adults who are chronically ill mostly already have Medicaid. True, there could be a temporary spike in costs when everyone newly eligible for Medicaid tries to road-test their new benefits. But they’ll quickly learn that waits are long and good doctors are hard to find.
So what about James Monroe and the Era of Good Feelins. The argument is that you need a party hierarchy to avoid palace rivalries in Versailles. I find the argument unpersuasive. The simple solution is to have your VP as your undisputed heir-apparent. Next question?
Not trying to be disputatious, bmull, but I would like to add a couple of things. Many people on Medicaid are categorically linked through federal aid programs. For example, children and parents (usually a single mother) covered under TANF (used to be AFDC) automatically are in Medicaid (MediCal in CA). Single poor adults, mainly males, are another matter altogether, including those whose disabilities are not significant enough to qualify for aid programs. Typically, they have to turn to local government for care, and, at least in CA, the income eligibility criteria for what’s called Indigent Care at the county level are tougher than those for MediCal. Of course, that leaves a big gap between Indigent Care and MediCal–and I guess we’ll find out how large the population is that fits in that gap, and how much it costs to address health and medical care issues that have not been addressed, or only partially and fitfully so, whenever they are allowed access.
It’s all such a mess. And whatever they’re devising now will probably be an improvement, but in this period of enforced austerity we will still have a long way to go.
Well I’ll swan. “S&P balks at SEC proposal to reveal ratings errors” Apparently, the SEC has a 517-page proposal containing “sweeping new rules designed to improve the quality of ratings after their poor performance in the financial crisis.”
It’s true that the newly eligibles will be mostly single poor adults, whereas the current Medicaid population is mostly healthy children. So if children are included the cost-per-beneficiary is going to be higher for the newly eligible group. But I believe CBO already accounted for that in their estimates.
The Hill article is a bit unclear, but this new study seems to be saying that newly eligible adults will be sicker than the adults currently on Medicaid. If that’s what they’re saying they’re wrong:
http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412206-health-status.pdf
Why thanks so much for the link, bmull! I searched for “homeless” and did find one occurrence–on p. 9. I was looking for that since they used the household survey which I didn’t think includes the homeless and since so many of the county Indigent Care patients are homeless. As stated on page 9, they didn’t include the homeless in their analysis. Don’t know precisely how including the homeless would affect their analysis, and I’m definitely not up to undertaking that study at this late date, but it will be very interesting to see what does happen. Let’s hope for the best for the sake of the people in need.
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