>Another Night, Another Heller Telephone Town Hall Immigrant Bashing Session

>Once again, lucky me, to be selected to hang on the phone line for yet another Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV2) Telephone Town Hall, and be treated to a lovely evening of immigrant bashing, coal loving, socialized medicine hating rhetoric, devoid of much synthesis, analysis, or for that matter – facts.

During the course of the session Rep. Heller made clear his attitude toward those for whom American English isn’t their native language, he proudly announced his support for English Only voting materials (without of course noting that this is one excellent way to suppress voting by Spanish reading Americans, and confuse ballot initiatives for those not comfortable with English legalese), for English to be declared the National Language; and, that “English be required on the job.” (Unless, of course, the workers are, say, doing one’s lawn or exercising one’s saddle horses?)

However, the main immigrant bashing came in the form of “Tonight’s Poll Question:” “Are you in favor of Congress granting access to illegal immigrants for taxpayer funded health care?” It might be illustrative at this point to insert the lyrics to “Pop Goes the Weasel” because the Congressman made it perfectly obvious why he wanted “input” on this question – he wants us all to know that the ONLY reason he voted against the SCHIP legislation was because “only a Social Security number is required to enroll in the program, and illegal immigrants have phony cards, therefore illegal immigrants could sign up for the program.” He wants us all to be perfectly assured that if this provision were deleted he would be proud and pleased to support the program, but “the only reason for the extension was to allow access to illegal immigrants” and therefore he voted against it. It’s hard to decide where to start shoveling out the ‘south bound products of north bound bulls” in this segment.

First, the illegal immigrant canard is a favorite among right wing publications like Human Events since 2007 at least, but that doesn’t make the information accurate. The non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation’s report on the SCHIP program in 2007 states flatly: “Some groups of children such as legal immigrants living in this country for less than five years and illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP except on an emergency basis even if they meet other income requirements; however, immigrant children make up a small percentage of the number of uninsured.” [KFF pdf] As of 2005 some 15.8% of Nevada children were uninsured, but the Congressman is perfectly willing to sacrifice their needs to prevent the already prevented. [KFF pdf]

Secondly, this doesn’t seem to be sufficient assurance for Congressman Heller that somewhere out there lurking in the darkness an illegal immigrant will surreptitiously use a phony ID to sign up – even though offers were made to tighten the language on enrollment in October 2007 including an expressed prohibition on covering illegal immigrants. [WaPo] The Congressman didn’t seem to find it important to mention this during his push-polling this evening.

Finally, that the ‘reason for the extension was to include illegal immigrants’ is, to put it gently, a fabrication. The reason for the proposed extension is that there are states like Nevada who have an unconscionable level of uninsured children and others which could certainly do better by working families who cannot afford health insurance coverage.

A person could infer from this push-polling immigrant bashing that Heller’s relying on uninformed Nativism and prejudice to bolster his credibility with Nevada voters in 2008, and to excuse his position on the SCHIP bill.

But, wait, Heller wasn’t finished. When an uninsured caller noted that he’d actually shopped local medical services to find the best price for a CRT and located one estimated at $1,400 which ended up costing him $6,000, Heller’s reply was we have the greatest health care system in the world. The solution to the problem is lowering the cost of prescription drugs (how this relates to the cost of a CRT is anyone’s guess), allow small businesses to form groups to secure health care insurance, and – the ever present Bug-Bear of Republicans – medical tort reform.

We are left to our own devices to figure out how the Bush Administration’s opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices squares with Heller’s interest in lowering health care costs. Allowing small businesses to create health care pools is nice, but doesn’t do a thing for those who are self-employed, or retired and not eligible for Medicare. The ‘tort reform problem’ exists mostly in the minds of right wingers unaware of the Harvard School of Public Health’s study which demonstrated that the number of meritorious claims that did not get paid was actually larger than the number of meritless claims that did. The Report is far more optimistic about the system than Republicans for whom lawyers are the second preferred target after immigrants: “Overall, the malpractice system appears to be getting it right about three quarters of the time,” said Studdert. “That’s far from a perfect record, but it’s not bad, especially considering that questions of error and negligence can be complex.” The 27% of cases with outcomes that didn’t match their merit included claims that went unpaid even though the injury was caused by an error (16%); claims that were paid but did not involve error (10%); and claims that were paid but did not appear to involve a treatment-related injury (0.4%).” [TchNet]

If the Harvard Study isn’t enough, there was the 2005 Dartmouth College report that indicated that rising doctors’ premiums for medical malpractice insurance was not due to lawsuit awards. Representative Heller must have missed these two memos.

Representative Heller consigns all other formulas for making health care affordable for average working Americans, single payer plans, universal coverage, etc., to the dust bin of Socialized Medicine – no explanation offered. (Unless, of course, it’s the socialized medicine for which members of Congress are eligible?)

One other topic allowed the Representative from District 2 to use his “light switch” line. When asked about rural areas not serviced by electricity transmission lines, the transmission line question was brush briefly by saying that permission was required from the Feds to build lines in some rural areas – the Congressman then reprised his early remarks about wanting every one of his constituents to be able to switch on a light and have it work, and be priced reasonably – and, of course that means that we must build more emission blooming coal fired power plants requiring the importation of fuel into Nevada – not, of course, developing Nevada’s solar, geothermal, or wind resources.

If the newly minted member of the Financial Services Committee has gained information and perspective on the credit crunch/subprime debacle it unfortunately wasn’t evident. A specific target of his ire was the proposition under discussion in the Senate to allow adjudicated mortgage settlements. Beyond that the Congressman hopes the stimulus package (“the government giving money back to taxpayers”) will revive the economy – and, oh yes, we must make the Bush Tax Cuts permanent or “everyone’s tax rates will increase.” Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.