Think Progress

HEALTH CARE -- GOVERNMENT ISSUES TWO REPORTS THAT HIGHLIGHT THE NEED TO ACT NOW ON HEALTH CARE REFORM: With health care reform a priority of the Obama administration and negotiations with legislators underway, two annual government studies released yesterday demonstrate further the dire state of the current health care system. One of the studies, the National Healthcare Disparities Report concluded, "We can and should do better." Indeed, the report found that there are "significant variations in quality between states and among procedures." Additionally the report found that while treatment for acute conditions such as heart attacks have improved in the last year, the rate of improvement in long-term care and preventative screenings for chronic conditions like cancer have dwindled. The second study, conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, found that out of the 38 patient safety measures tested, including "accidental lacerations and catheter-associated infections," only about half have been reduced this year. Additionally, "the agency concluded that one of every seven hospitalized adults on Medicare had experienced at least one adverse event" while receiving care. Discussing the reports' findings yesterday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced that $50 million in federal stimulus grants will "help states combat infections associated with health care." As The Wonk Room's Igor Volsky has repeatedly written, the declining quality of health care in the U.S., and the rapidly increasing cost of that care, necessitates the urgency that the Obama administration is placing on health care reform.

ECONOMY -- REPORT: WALL STREET FIRMS DROVE SUBPRIME CRISIS: The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) released an extensive report yesterday detailing how Wall Street firms fueled the subprime lending that helped create the current economic crisis. CPI reported that "at least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were financed by banks that received bailout money -- through direct ownership, credit agreements, or huge purchases of loans for securitization." More importantly, CPI wrote, "increasingly, lenders were selling their loans to Wall Street, so they wouldn't be left holding the deed in the event of a foreclosure. In a financial version of hot potato, they could make bad loans and just pass them along." The Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo noted that the Wall Street firms would in turn "sell the loans to institutional investors, and use the money raised to buy more subprime loans, in a vicious cycle of buying, selling, and lending." This report paints quite a different picture than the one conservatives were trying to sell last fall, when they repeatedly claimed that the mortgage crisis was the fault of banks lending to minorities. As Fox News's Neil Cavuto said at the time, "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."

RADICAL RIGHT -- CHENEY EXPLAINS THAT HE'S SPEAKING OUT AGAINST OBAMA TO PROTECT THE 'LITTLE GUYS': Since leaving office, Vice President Cheney has launched unrelenting and baseless attacks on President Obama while vigorously defending the Bush administration. In an interview with the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes on Monday, Cheney explained why he has emerged as such a vocal Bush defender and Obama critic -- in contrast to President Bush, who says Obama "deserves my silence." Cheney said that when he was a member of Congress during the Iran-Contra investigations (of which he was a prominent critic), he saw firsthand senior administration officials absolving themselves while unfairly pinning blame on the "little guys." Because of this, Cheney said, he "sure as hell will" continue to speak out: "I went through the Iran-contra hearings and watched the way administration officials ran for cover and left the little guys out to dry. And I was bound and determined that wasn't going to happen this time. ... And this time around I'll do my damnedest to defend anybody out there," Cheney said. Cheney's defense of the "little guy," especially with regard to torture, is unusual. First, the Bush officials implicated in approving torture were hardly "little" -- they were the senior-most Bush administration officials, such as David Addington, Jay Bybee, and Alberto Gonzales. Second, after Abu Ghraib broke in 2004, Cheney and other top Bush officials systematically laid the blame for the abuses on low-level interrogators, the real little guys, in an attempt to exonerate senior officials. Yet as a recent Senate Armed Services Committee report observed, "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own."

The White House will announce a plan to cut 121 government programs amounting to a savings of $17 billion from the federal budget. Budget analysts predicted the cuts will be a tough sell. "Even if you got all of those things, it would be saving pennies, not dollars. And you're not going to begin to get all of them," said Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill.

After Maine became the fifth state to legalize marriage equality yesterday, RNC chairman Michael Steele released this statement: "I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman and strongly disagree with Maine's decision to legalize gay marriage." His comments put him at odds with Maine's two Republican senators, who believe the issue should be left up to the states.

Following a series of gay rights victories in the states, President Obama "is under pressure to engage on a variety of gay issues that are coming to the fore amid a dizzying pace of social, political, legal and legislative change." On Monday, some gay rights leaders met with top White House officials "to plot legislative strategy on the hate crimes bill as well as 'don't ask, don't tell.'"

A new poll from Hays Research in Anchorage, AK says Gov. Sarah Palin (R) now has 54 percent positive rating in her state. That's down from 86 percent a year ago and 59.8 percent on March 24.

"[T]he big bailouts for the banks may be over," as the results from the government's stress tests "so far seem to suggest that the 19 institutions that underwent these exams will need less than $100 billion in additional equity to cope with a deep recession, far less than some investors had feared."

Though Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has suggested limiting the tax break for employee health benefits -- which tend to skew to people with the highest incomes -- Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) said there was "no way" he would agree with such a move. But as the New York Times notes, Rangel "did not suggest any specific way to finance coverage for more than 45 million people now uninsured."

Speaking to Marines in Afghanistan yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that there are "no plans to deploy U.S. ground troops to Pakistan." As Gates put it, the troops don't have to "worry about going to Pakistan."

In an interview with the Washington Times, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Daniel Inouye (D-HI) "vowed to restore funding President Obama requested to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp." "It's going to be in the bill," Inouye said, adding, "Something like this should be resolved in the conference."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) sent a letter this week to Attorney General Eric Holder to "name a special prosecutor or an independent commission to investigate torture." Schakowsky wrote, "There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law."

And finally: Yesterday, "America's Next Top Model" judge and photographer Nigel Barker interviewed Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) for a "documentary he's filming with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation." Before the interview, Lowey reportedly asked the crew "not to film her tennis shoes, which she feared weren't especially fashion-forward. But Barker disagreed, telling Lowey that 'they look like Prada.'" Barker later told Roll Call that the all-black shoes were "all the rage in Europe," and she could "bring the look to Congress."