Matt Yglesias

Thousands of Uninsured Arkansans Seek Free Medical Care

NAFC photo

It’s not a coincidence that states with elected officials who are dubious about health reform tend to have the largest number of uninsured people. The same political culture that produces high uninsurance rates at the state level normally also produces federal officials who are hostile to measures to broaden access. But as long as the spotlight’s on Arkansas:

According to the Arkansas Department of Health, around 450 thousand Arkansans lack health insurance. More than a thousand of those uninsured made their way to Little Rock’s Statehouse Convention Center on Saturday for the National Association of Free Clinics “C.A.R.E.” event. [...] According to the NAFC, more than 90 percent of those who came on Saturday had three or more life-threatening conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes, cardio-vascular, and pulmonary disease. Dr. Kimberly Garner, who works for the Veteran’s Administration in North Little Rock and was one of the volunteer physicians at the clinic, says those kinds of numbers illustrate the need for change.

As of 2008, 19.2 percent of non-elderly Arkansans were uninsured (Arkansas seniors, of course, avail themselves of government-run health insurance), a bit higher than the national average. Many of those people would be made much better off by the health reform bill that passed the House or by the somewhat different one that passed the Senate. But Blanche Lincoln says that unless Democrats agree to kill the idea of introducing a public option into the mix, she’ll vote against a bill that would otherwise help many of her constituents.

Blanche Lincoln’s Website Still Says She Supports The Public Option

My colleague Igor Volsky points out that not only did Blanche Lincoln used to support a public option, as of last night at least that language was still up on her website:

Her specific belief that a public option, if enacted, would eventually receive public funds even if it’s created by a law that prohibits taxpayer subsidies is a little bit hard to understand. Right now there aren’t sixty votes in the Senate for taxpayer subsidies to a public option. Nor is there a majority in the House for taxpayer subsidies to a public option. Nor does the White House support such subsidies. And we’re at something of a high water mark for Democratic victories—how likely is a simultaneous leftward shift by all three branches?

Blanche Lincoln, Racing Horse

Blanche Lincoln has emerged as one of the pivotal votes in the US Senate debate about health care reform. So an article about her and her role in the debate seems like a smart thing for a newspaper to run. Which makes Spencer Ackerman’s tweet quite apropos: “Hey let’s say that I didn’t pay any attn to HC yesterday. Shouldn’t this piece tell me why Lincoln opposes the bill?”

Exactly. It’s striking to me how little scrutiny the stated views of public option opponents tend to get. Moderates are very rarely asked to explain what it is about an opt-outable level playing field public option that’s so horrible that it becomes suddenly worthwhile to filibuster an otherwise good bill that will put the country on a more sustainable fiscal course will improving millions of Americans’ access to health care.

Hot New Blanche Lincoln Polling

Yesterday I referenced some fairly dated polling on Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. Here’s a poll from just last week:

The report suggests Lincoln is vulnerable as she seeks a third term in the Senate next year. The university’s poll, however, said that three-fourths of respondents aren’t following news about Lincoln’s re-election bid. [...] The poll reported that just 43 percent of Arkansans polled approve of the job Lincoln is doing as senator. She enjoyed a 54 percent approval rating last fall.

These are bad, though not-necessarily-cataclysmic numbers for Lincoln. But she really needs to be seen as delivering the goods for her state’s business elite. For example, you might wonder why an alleged deficit hawk from a relative poor state would be fighting hard for a huge tax cut for muli-millionaires. Then you need to recall that thanks to Wal-Mart two of the ten richest people in America live in Arkansas.

Blanche Lincoln and Health Care

Some Democratic Senators really enjoy making waves in the national press with highly public hand-wringing about the progressive agenda. Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas isn’t like that. Consequently, she tends to fly under the radar screen. But as Brian Beutler points out, in some ways her vote may be the hardest to get:

As a rule, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) may not be as ideological as Nelson is. But she’s got a problem on her hands right now that Nelson doesn’t. She’s an unpopular senator in a conservative state and she’s up for re-election next year. Unlike Nelson (or Joe Lieberman, who we’ll get to momentarily) securing Lincoln’s procedural vote is a nuts-and-bolts political problem. How do you get her into a position where she (and the Democratic party) feels her seat isn’t particularly imperiled by votes for health care reform. Last week, she met with both Reid and President Obama. Those conversations will surely continue.

The most recent polling on Lincoln I found with a quick Google was from August and it looked really bleak for her. On the other hand, the public option polls well in Arkansas. But perhaps the most convincing thing you could say would be the argument from legacy. A lot of members of congress spent 1993 and ‘94 spiking the Clinton legislative agenda and then went down to defeat in November 1994 anyway. Wouldn’t it make more sense to turn the 111th Congress into a substantive success, hope you can persuade the voters that these are good ideas, and if you fail at least manage to have gone down fighting accomplishing something important?

The New Committee Lineup

Chris Dodd bucked expectations and decided to stay in charge of the Senate Banking Committee. Then Tom Harkin further bucked expectations and decided to depart from his perch at the Agriculture Committee (thought to be exactly where an Iowa Senator wants to be) and take over the HELP Committee. That leaves Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas as the chair of Agriculture, which should be good for her re-election bid.

But is it good for America? Brad Johnson notes that Lincoln is a very strident opponent of climate change legislation, calling even the post-Collin Peterson version of the legislation a “total non-starter.” And the left will have basically no leverage over her; she’s at real risk of losing her seat to a Republican, and Barack Obama is very unpopular in Arkansas. That said, the alternative to this scenario was Tim Johnson heading up Banking, so this is arguably a superior outcome. In terms of core agriculture policy issues, switching from Harkin at the top to Lincoln at the top will probably mostly make things bad in a different way. Policy less oriented toward the interests of people who grow corn, and more oriented toward the interests of Tyson Foods—purveyors of fine fast food chicken products.

Lincoln and Kyl Team Up to Offer Tax Cut for the Super-Rich

John Kyl (R-Arkansas), who has a lot of odd policy views, and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), who seems to really love the Walton family, have apparently introduced a bill to offer $249.5 billion worth of tax cuts to the inheritors of estates worth over $7 million. This is just abysmal public policy for reasons amply summarized by Ben Furnas and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. I’m actually a bit inclined to wonder if there are even any non-Waltons in Arkansas with estates this valuable. Note that $7 million is approximately 155 times the median household income of Arkansas.

I’m especially fake-surprised to see Senator Lincoln leading the charge for this, since she’s a charter member of Evan Bayh’s “practical caucus” which fake-believes that fiscal discipline is so important that it’s necessary to curtail progressive priorities. Apparently, deficit reduction is more important than affordable health insurance but less important than giveaways to multi-millionaires. Indeed, Lincoln’s alleged commitment to fiscal responsibility looks even more dubious in light of her support for the 2001 Bush tax cuts.

Sens. Bayh, Carper, Lincoln Commit Themselves to Obama

A lot of progressives were alarmed when they heard Evan Bayh was launching a bloc of self-described moderate Democratic Senators as it seemed the only purpose of such a group could be to water down the president’s agenda. But the administration and the congressional leadership seemed pretty sanguine. And now here comes a Washington Post op-ed by Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, and Tom Carper saying that’s not the right way to look at it. They say they “feel compelled to set the record straight” and “believe that President Obama is correct when he says that we cannot afford to wait any longer to fix health care and transition to a clean-energy economy.”

The issue, as they see it, is that “on nearly all important votes, a supermajority of 60 senators will be needed to pass legislation” which means that “without Democratic moderates working to find common ground with reasonable Republicans, the president’s agenda could well be filibustered into oblivion.” I’ll stop here to note that there actually is an alternative here, albeit one that nobody in the Senate seems inclined to pursue, namely filibuster reform. Previous eras of substantive progressive reform have usually gone hand-in-hand with procedural reform. But that’s not on the table, so their alternative is working to find common ground with reasonable Republicans. It’s a good idea, I think. They themselves write, however, that when it comes to solving America’s big problems “Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has basically decided to stay on the sidelines to let the Democrats carry the load of reform alone.”

Who are the Republicans they’re going to work with? Arlen Specter who’s running scared of a primary challenge from the right and flip-flopping as fast as he can to base-friendly territory?