THE DAILY BLADE: Why Shouldn’t Illegals Get Government Healthcare?
In response to Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) question about whether illegal aliens will be eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance coverage under Dem healthcare “reform” proposals, liberals have answered, “Why shouldn’t they be?”
Take for instance, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who asks:
If you saw a woman struck by a car, would you call an ambulance right away? Or would you first ask for her papers to make sure she was not an illegal immigrant?
If someone living down the street from you were suffering from the H1N1 flu, wouldn't you want him to get immediate medical help? Would you rather see him in pain and perhaps spread the disease to others in your neighborhood? …
Forget compassion and consider self-interest. Aren't you better off if the person working next to you who has a communicable disease has early access to care?
How mean-spirited will we allow ourselves to become? How coarsened has our political culture made us? We like to see ourselves as a generous, caring and welcoming nation. Are we losing that part of our character?
Without question an uninsured illegal alien who is seriously injured or sick should receive medical attention – though a FL jury recently ruled that such generosity and mercy is not limitless (fourth item). But why should treatment be provided at private hospitals - which pass the costs on to insured patients in the form of $50 Tylenol pills - or community hospitals - which receive taxpayer subsidies? Minimum-security prison hospitals housing non-violent white collar criminals can provide adequate treatment for acute injuries and illness, and when the patient is stable enough to be discharged (s)he should get an immediate hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether deportation is warranted.
Rather than plucking at the heart strings, this commentary in Newsweek ticks off “practical” reasons to provide healthcare coverage to illegals:
From a purely economic standpoint, insuring illegal immigrants makes a lot of sense—and not just for them, but for everyone.
Consider a few statistics. According to a July article in the American Journal of Public Health, immigrants typically arrive in America during their prime working years and tend to be younger and healthier than the rest of the U.S. population. As a result, health-care expenditures for the average immigrant are 55 percent lower than for a native-born American citizen with similar characteristics. With the ratio of seniors to workers projected to increase by 67 percent between 2010 and 2030, it stands to reason that including the relatively healthy, relatively employable and largely uninsured illegal population in some sort of universal health-care system would be a boon rather than a burden. …
[E]mployers currently have a clear economic incentive to hire undocumented immigrants: they don't require coverage. A plan that mandates insurance for native workers but not their illegal counterparts actually makes life harder on the blue-collar Americans competing for jobs (and railing against immigrants) because it means that hiring them will cost more than hiring a recent transplant from Mexico City.
Where to begin? How about this: Illegals may be healthy when they get here but these functionally illiterate, low-skilled workers (third item) become seriously injured on the job at alarmingly high rates. Treating spinal and brain injuries, for instance, is very expensive. The average American won’t rack up healthcare costs in this league until (s)he is elderly.
And with consistent, across-the-board use of E-Verify (third item) - not to mention the threat of prosecution (third item) for knowingly hiring illegals – native-born or documented workers will not be at a disadvantage in the workplace.
But this is all moot as there won’t be any illegal immigrants in the U.S., if President Barack Hussein Obama has his way. He revealed that he has no intention of covering illegal immigrants under his healthcare “reform” plan, because he has every intention to give all 12 million of them citizenship, reports The Washington Times:
“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don't simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. …
Mr. Obama added, "If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."
Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.
"It is ironic that the president told the American people that illegal immigrants should not be covered by the health care bill, but now just days later he's talking about letting them in the back door," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.
"If the American people do not want to provide government health care for illegal immigrants, why would they support giving them citizenship, the highest honor America can bestow?" Mr. Smith said.
They won’t. A recent Rasmussen telephone survey found that “[t]he desire to limit the benefits to U.S. citizens is found across demographic and partisan lines”:
It is held by 95% of Republicans, 70% of Democrats and 87% of those not affiliated with either major party. It is favored by nine-out-of-10 conservatives and moderates, along with 56% of those who consider themselves politically liberal. …
In June, 80% were opposed to providing health care benefits to illegal immigrants.
These staggeringly high numbers – and the fact that they have remained steady for months – suggest that Americans are unwaveringly opposed to any scheme that would give illegal immigrants the rewards of citizenship.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, tells The Washington Post, “[T]here are a lot of members of Congress who might have thought the immigration issue wasn't as hot for opponents as it was a couple of years ago. They were disabused of that notion."
Obama pulls a stunt like this, and the 2010 elections will prove a stunning reversal of fortune for Dems and he will find himself with a challenger from his own party come 2012.
In Memoriam
Irving Kristol, January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009
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