OBAMA DOES NOT DO ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT SERVE HIS CORPORATE
PAYMASTERS, OR EXPAND HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF VOTING ILLEGALS!
OBAMA LIED!!! THAT OBAMAcare DID NOT INCLUDE ILLEGALS!!! HE
LIED IN OUR FACE OFF THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE – State of the Union MESSAGE. HE
AND PELOSI DEVISED IT SO THAT IT WAS !!! ILLEGAL !!! FOR HEALTHCARE
PRACTITIONERS TO ASK IF THE ILLEGAL IS ILLEGAL!
IN CALIFORNIA ALONE, 84 HOSPITALS HAVE BEEN BANKRUPTED BY
LEGALLY HAVING TO BE MEXICO’S “FREE” HEALTHCARE SYSTEM! IF YOU WONDERED WHY YOU
HAD TO PAY $80 FOR AN ASPIRIN IN WHILE IN THE HOSPITAL, YOU’RE SUPPORTING OBAMA’S
LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS AND THE FREE HEALTHCARE THEY GET IN AMERICA.
IN CA, HOSPITALS PUT OUT $1.2 BILLION PER YEAR IN “FREE”
EMERGENCY ROOM HEALTH CARE FOR LA RAZA!!!
*
*
Where
To Go When Your Local Emergency Room Goes Bankrupt?"
During the past ten years 84
California hospitals have declared bankruptcy and closed down their Emergency
Rooms forever. Financially crippled by legistlative and
judicial mandates to treat illegal aliens have bankrupted hospitals!
In 2010, in Los Angeles County alone, over 2 million illegal aliens
recorded visits to county emergency rooms for both routine and emergency
care. Per official figures, the cost is $1,000 dollars for
every taxpayer in Los Angeles County.
*
“That is why
the Obama healthcare program is supported by major sections of big business,
including the bulk of those corporations—drug manufacturers, health insurance
companies, and giant hospital chains—whose profit drive is fundamentally
responsible for the healthcare crisis.
The Obama plan
has been drawn up in close consultation with these corporate interests, who
have been given explicit assurances that their profits will not be threatened.
It is the patients, i.e., the entire American population, who will bear the
cost, through the establishment of a two-class healthcare system—first-class
care for those who can afford it, and cut-rate care for the vast majority.”
*
WSWS.ORG
Healthcare
and the social crisis in America
17 August
2009
A tidal wave of suffering and human need has been on display
this week at a free healthcare clinic inside a Los Angeles-area sports arena.
Just as the New Orleans Superdome, packed with refugees from Hurricane Katrina,
shocked the world in 2005, the scene in Inglewood, California gives a glimpse
of the social crisis devastating America. And it could be multiplied, a
thousand times over, in every city, suburb and rural district of the United
States, as deepening unemployment and spreading homelessness exacerbate what
was already a vast unmet need for healthcare services.
Thousands of uninsured workers and their families have
flocked to the Forum at Inglewood since Tuesday, seeking free medical and dental
care from a group of volunteer doctors, dentists and nurses. The Forum,
formerly the suburban home of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, became
for a week the site of the largest free medical clinic in American history.
The organizers of the event, the Remote Area Medical
Foundation, a Tennessee-based charity that relies on contributions of money and
medical supplies and volunteer medical personnel, said that more than 8,000
people would receive help at the Forum before the event was finished. In the
first three days alone, 706 teeth were extracted, 1,640 fillings put in, 141
mammograms administered and 550 sets of eyeglasses prepared. There were
hundreds of pap smears and tuberculosis tests. Some patients were put directly
into waiting ambulances and taken to local emergency rooms.
Many of the patients waited for hours or slept overnight in
their cars to make sure they did not lose their place in line. The demand has
overwhelmed the supply of volunteers, with foundation leader Stan Brock saying
the clinic had work for 100 dentists and 20 eye doctors, more than three times
the number who were mobilized.
Remote Area Medical has focused on impoverished third-world
countries for more than 20 years, beginning with clinics in the Amazon jungle
of Brazil. But in recent years it has begun to work inside the United States,
including in New Orleans after Katrina, and earlier this year in the
Appalachian foothills of Virginia, where volunteer dentists performed more than
4,300 tooth extractions in two days.
The Los Angeles event was made possible by a group of film
and record producers who learned of the charity’s activities from a “60
Minutes” profile and contacted Brock. The Forum, now owned by a local church,
was chosen as a centrally located site, close to the densely populated south
side Los Angeles.
One volunteer dentist who spoke to the local media said that
conditions in Los Angeles were worse than in Brazil, where he has done
equivalent charity work. “They have a nice system of public hospitals and
clinics,” he said, referring to Brazil. A volunteer doctor, when asked about
the difference between Third World conditions and those in Los Angeles,
responded, “Here the people speak English.”
According to local press accounts, among those seeking help
at the clinic were:
• A homeless man who camped outside in order to get glasses
• An unemployed grocery clerk needing a root canal
• A laid-off auto mechanic with back pain
• A laid-off office worker uninsured for two years
• A cancer patient who had exhausted her benefits under her HMO plan
• A community college student with sinus problems and blurred vision
• A laid-off security guard who needed glasses
• An unemployed grocery clerk with a toothache
• A woman whose children are covered under the state Medi-Cal plan but lacks
insurance for herself
• A county government worker whose dental insurance deductibles were too high
to afford treatment for her husband and three-year-old daughter
• A retired welder who lost his coverage while he was in the middle of getting
dentures
• A couple, both employed, who between them needed dentures, a general
physical, a breast exam and a pap smear
• A diabetic amputee who could not afford to buy needed drugs
• A retiree needing an X-ray for a lung problem
• A 70-year-old Vietnam vet who put off a root canal for two years because the
VA hospital was overwhelmed with more urgent cases
• A 63-year-old woman who received her first new pair of glasses in five years
• A 46-year-old woman who had an abnormal pap smear last year but was unable to
follow up because Medi-Cal denied her coverage.
Carol Meyer, a top official of the Los Angeles County
Department of Health Services, visited the Forum and drew the obvious lesson,
telling reporters: “The current system of healthcare in the United States is
broken.” Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez called the lines
outside the Forum, “the perfect distillation of an unconscionable societal
failure.”
The huge turnout for the free clinic attracted significant
media coverage in both the network television news and the major daily
newspapers. But neither of the two sides in the official “healthcare debate”
has made any reference to it.
For the Republican Party, the vast dimensions of the social
crisis in America are an inconvenient distraction from its ongoing efforts to
mobilize ultra-right and fascist-minded elements against the Obama
administration. Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Fox News & Co. prefer fanning
hysteria over “death panels” and other such mirages to confronting the reality
that tens of millions of working people lack access to needed healthcare
because they have no insurance or no money.
For Obama and the Democrats, however, the Forum event is
equally unwelcome. The president addressed town hall meetings on healthcare
Friday night and Saturday night in Montana and Colorado. At neither of the
forums, heavily publicized and televised live on cable, did he make any
reference to the extraordinary and moving spectacle in Los Angeles. On Sunday,
an op-ed column on healthcare appeared in the New York Times under
Obama’s byline, also without any mention of the Forum free clinic.
This deliberate silence is proof enough that Obama’s
healthcare program has nothing to do with “reform,” in the sense of any genuine
effort to make an improvement, even of a minimal character, in the availability
of healthcare to working people.
More than four decades ago, both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
Johnson visited impoverished areas of Appalachia as part of efforts to win
support for the anti-poverty measures enacted during the 1960s. If Obama were
advocating even a limited social reform, he would have seized on the Los
Angeles event as a demonstration of the acute social need.
But the goal of Obama’s pro-corporate healthcare
restructuring is to increase the financial health of American capitalism, not
to improve the physical health of the American people. Hence his overriding
emphasis on the need to cut healthcare spending, in order to reduce labor costs
and improve the competitive position of corporate America.
That is why the
Obama healthcare program is supported by major sections of big business,
including the bulk of those corporations—drug manufacturers, health insurance
companies, and giant hospital chains—whose profit drive is fundamentally
responsible for the healthcare crisis.
The Obama plan
has been drawn up in close consultation with these corporate interests, who
have been given explicit assurances that their profits will not be threatened.
It is the patients, i.e., the entire American population, who will bear the
cost, through the establishment of a two-class healthcare system—first-class
care for those who can afford it, and cut-rate care for the vast majority.
As opposed to the fake alternatives presented by the Obama
administration—either his reactionary healthcare program or the status quo—the
working class must demand an end to medicine-for-profit, and the establishment
of free healthcare for all, as a basic human right, to be provided at public
expense.
The resources for healthcare should be obtained as part of
the socialist reorganization of all of economic life. This means the
nationalization of the giant corporations and banks, the confiscation of the
wealth of Wall Street and the super-rich, and the transformation of the
healthcare industry into a public utility dedicated to serving human needs and
democratically owned and controlled by the working people.
Patrick Martin
*
*
FROM JUDICIAL WATCH.org
Mexico Promotes Free U.S. Healthcare For
Illegal Immigrants
Time
to wake up people! With unemployment at 12% and the state going broke, our tax
dollars are going to pay for healthcare for hundreds of thousands of illegal
aliens. To the tune of over a billion dollars a year!
Mexico's government operates programs in about a dozen American cities that
refers its nationals--living in the U.S. illegally--to publicly funded health
centers where they can get free medical care without being turned over to
immigration authorities.
The program is called Ventanillas de Salud (Health Windows) in Spanish and its
mission is to help illegal immigrants find U.S. hospitals, clinics and other
government programs where they can get free services without being deported for
violating federal immigration laws.
Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego and Indiana are among the cities where
Mexican consulates operate the health referral system which annually costs U.S.
taxpayers billions of dollars. In Los Angeles County alone, illegal immigrants
cost taxpayers nearly $440 million in health services annually and a whopping
$1.1 billion statewide.
The Mexican consul in Los Angeles proudly announced that nearly 300,000 Mexicans
in the area have benefited from his government's health referral program, which
he says actually saves the county money by encouraging immigrants to seek
preventive care rather than waiting for more expensive emergency treatment.
The Southern California operation promises to assess "consulate
clients" for eligibility to government-funded health insurance and other
primary care services and offers free legal assistance to those who are denied
coverage. Its goal is to improve access to health services for immigrants of
Mexican origin by formalizing a health education, medical home referral and
insurance enrollment program.
In Chicago, the Mexican consul's Spanish-language web site heavily promotes the
Illinois Department of Health's low-cost prescription medicine program for
illegal aliens and various free medical services throughout the state. It
encourages all Mexicans in the area to pursue the valuable U.S.
government-financed services for their entire family.
The Indiana-based program boasts that it serves thousands of "Mexican
nationals" living in that state as well as Ohio, Kentucky and southern
Illinois. Mexican officials claim that its highly successful pro-health program
sends out a clear message to other Mexican consulates throughout the country
and the world.
Although these programs facilitate people to remain in the country illegally,
Mexico is working hard to expand them to all 47 U.S. consulates to better serve
its nationals. In the meantime, U.S. taxpayers will keep picking up the exorbitant
tab of medically treating the millions who live in the country illegally.
www.judicialwatchwatch.org
*
Illegals’ medical bills top $35.7M
Taxpayers
hit hard for trips to ER
Beleaguered
Bay State and U.S. taxpayers coughed up a staggering $35.7 million this year in
free emergency health care for more than 52,000 illegal aliens in
Massachusetts, sparking outrage from candidates and critics who back a tougher
line on immigration.
The
figures — released by Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration under an order for the Secretary of
State’s office and after more than a month of ducking questions — show illegal immigrants who belong to MassHealth
Limited received $33.8 million in taxpayer-funded in-patient hospital care this
year.
They
also made 6,160 visits to the state’s overburdened emergency rooms in the
fiscal year ending in June for an additional cost of $1.9 million, a Herald
analysis shows.
*
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
latimes.com
Opinion
California must stem the flow of illegal immigrants
The state should go after employers who hire them, curb
taxpayer-funded benefits, deploy the National Guard to help the feds at the
border and penalize 'sanctuary' cities.
Illegal immigration is another matter entirely. With the state budget in
tatters, millions of residents out of work and a state prison system strained
by massive overcrowding, California simply cannot continue to ignore the strain
that illegal immigration puts on our budget and economy. Illegal aliens cost
taxpayers in our state billions of dollars each year. As economist Philip J. Romero concluded in a 2007 study, "illegal
immigrants impose a 'tax' on legal California residents in the tens of billions
of dollars."
*
“Through love of
having children, we are going to take over.” AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA
FASCIST PARTY
Illegal Aliens Cause Massive Cuts For US Seniors (THESE ARE
DATED FIGURES. CALIFORNIA ALONE PUTS OUT NEARLY $20 BILLION. LOS ANGELES COUNTY
ALONE PAYS OUT $600 MILLION IN WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS, WHILE IT’S SCHOOLS ARE IN
MELTDOWN AND MEXICAN GANGS FLOURISH!)
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal
aliens each year in California alone!
Welfare for illegals in “sanctuary city” Los Angeles County
is $600 million per year (source: JudicalWatch.org).
*
2. $2.2 Billion
dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC,
and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
*
3. $2.5 Billion
dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
*
4. $12 Billion dollars
a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here
illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
*
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the
American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. 1 in 5 births
in Los Angeles are by Mexicans that crossed our borders for “free” birthing and
then 18 years of welfare. 1 in 10 the rest of the country!
*
6. $3 Million Dollars
a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. In California alone ONE BILLION
IS SPENT BY STATE PRISONS to maintain illegals, many of whom are still
operating their gang and drug operations. In sanctuary city Los Angeles,
approximately $300 million per year is spent on jails to incarcerate illegals
*
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal
aliens.
*
8. $90 Billion
Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by
the American taxpayers.
*
9. $300-$400 Billion
Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
*
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime
rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In
particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem
in the US. In sanctuary County of Los Angeles, there are 500 – 1,000 murders by
Mexican illegals. They cost the county nearly one million dollars each to
prosecute. Over 90% of all warrants for homicide is for a Mexican illegal! Of
Los Angeles’ TOP 200 MOST WANTED CRIMINALS, 176 ARE MEXICANS! There have been
2,000 Californians murdered by illegals that fled back to Mexico to avoid
prosecution. The rate for re-arrests of illegals is staggering.
*
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION
illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal
aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth,
heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
*
12. The National Policy Institute, estimated that the total
cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average
cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.
*
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in
remittances back to their countries of origin. Banks such as La Raza donors
Wells Fargo and Bank of America, both illegal open bank accounts for illegals,
and handed millions in mortgages to illegals with stolen I.D.
*
14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One
Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States Total
cost is a whoopin'... $338.3
*
VISIT THIS SITE
FOR INFO ON OUR NATION’S IDENTITY AS WE BECOME ANNEXED BY MEXICO
THE BRADLEY
REPORT ON AMERICAN’S NATIONAL IDENTITY
BRADLEYPORJECT.org
*
BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES - HOW MEXICO ANCHORS THEIR OCCUPATION OF AMERICAN AND EXPANDS THEIR WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS!
EVERY ANCHOR BABY BORN IN THE U.S. IS STILL A CITIZEN OF MEXICO. HE WILL BE TAUGHT TO SPEAK SPANISH FIRST, WAVE THE MEX FLAG, VIVA LA RAZA "THE RACE", AND KNOW THAT AMERICAN IS SIMPLY A TERRITORY OF MEXICO HERE FOR THE LOOTING!
"Remember 187 -- the Proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to
non-citizens -- was the last gasp of white America in California."
---Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party
Anchor Baby
Power
La
Voz de Aztlan has produced a video in honor of the millions of babies that have
been born as US citizens to Mexican undocumented parents. These babies are
destined to transform America. The nativist CNN reporter Lou Dobbs estimates
that there are over 200,000 "Anchor Babies" born every year whereas
George Putnam, a radio reporter, says the figure is closer to 300,000. La Voz
de Aztlan believes that the number is approximately 500,000 "Anchor
Babies" born every year.
The video below depicts the
many faces of the "Anchor Baby Generation". The video includes a
fascinating segment showing a group of elementary school children in Santa Ana,
California confronting the Minutemen vigilantes. The video ends with a now
famous statement by Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez of the University of Texas
at Austin.
THESE FIGURES ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY
ARE DATED. IT NOT EXCEEDS $600 MILLION PER YEAR!!! (source: Los Angeles County
& JUDICIAL WATCH)
*
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1949085/posts
LOS ANGELES – A MEXICAN WELFARE AND CRIME STATE WHERE THE
JOBS ALSO GO TO ILLEGALS
*
EXPORTING
POVERTY... we take MEXICO'S 38 million poor, illiterate, criminal and
frequently pregnant
The Mexican Invasion................................................
Mexico prefers to export its poor,
not uplift them
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html
*
Where
To Go When Your Local Emergency Room Goes Bankrupt?"
During the past ten years 84
California hospitals have declared bankruptcy and closed down their Emergency
Rooms forever. Financially crippled by legistlative and
judicial mandates to treat illegal aliens have bankrupted hospitals!
In 2010, in Los Angeles County alone, over 2 million illegal aliens
recorded visits to county emergency rooms for both routine and emergency
care. Per official figures, the cost is $1,000 dollars for
every taxpayer in Los Angeles County.
*
*
HE LIED, SHE LIED – LA RAZA DEMS
PELOSI AND OBAMA HAND IT TO THEIR LA RAZA PARTY BASE:
For some, a struggle WHO THINKS ABOUT THE STRUGGLE OF THE
AMERICANS?
Some illegal immigrants have used stolen Social Security numbers to qualify for
health programs -- a form of medical identity theft increasingly on hospital
radars. Many more scramble to pay for their medicine and doctors visits in
cash, a challenge in an economy where day-laborer work has dried up.
*
Illegals Receiving Health Care …."But....( of course there is!)"
“If you’re in this
country illegally, should you be able to get health care?” CNN’s John King
asked Mrs. Pelosi.
“No, illegal immigrants are not covered by this plan,” she replied.
Mrs. Pelosi’s remarks are downright deceptive, according to Congressman Lamar
Smith (R-Texas), who points out that the proposed health care legislation “
contains gaping loopholes that will allow illegal immigrants to receive
taxpayer-funded benefits .”
These loopholes, Rep. Smith maintains, are “no accident.” He maintains that the
proposed legislation, despite months of debate, still contains no mechanism for
verifying if applicants are legal residents or not.
The Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee attempted to address
this loophole by an amendment proposed by Congressman Dick Heller (R-Nevada)
which would have required applicants for government provided or subsidized
health care to demonstrate eligibility through the Income and Eligibility
Verification System (IEVS) and the Systematic Alien Verification for
Entitlements (SAVE) systems.
But, on July 29, the Heller Amendment was soundly defeated by the following 26
Majority Members of the House Ways & Means Committee: Xavier Becerra (Calif.), Shelley Berkley (Nev.), Earl
Blumenauer (Ore.), Joe Crowley (N.Y.), Artur Davis (Ala.), Danny Davis (Ill.),
Lloyd Doggett (Texas), Bob Etheridge (N.C.), Brian Higgins (N.Y.), Ron Kind
(Wis.), John Larson (Conn.), Sander Levin (Mich.), John Lewis (Ga.), Jim
McDermott (Wash.), Kendrick Meek (Fla.), Richard Neal (Mass.), Bill Pascrell
(N.J.), Earl Pomeroy (N.D.), Chairman Charlie Rangel (N.Y.), Linda Sanchez (Calif.), Allyson
Schwartz (Pa.), Pete Stark (Calif.),
John Tanner (Tenn.), Mike Thompson
(Calif.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), and John Yarmuth (Ky.).
The Federal for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) believes the legislation is
now purposefully self-contradictory in order to ensure that the millions of
illegal Latinos will receive coverage. FAIR points out that while one provision
of the proposed health care reform bill states illegal immigrants will not be
eligible for benefits, the legislation remains without any system of
verification for determining if a patient is a legal or illegal U. S. resident.
Moreover, Fair insists, the bill leaves open the possibility that if one
citizen family member is eligible for benefits, then the entire family —
including illegal immigrants — is also eligible for the benefits.
“At a time when the federal government is running trillion dollar deficits, and
the projected costs of the proposed health care overhaul seem to grow with each
passing day, the committee that writes our tax laws wants Americans to pay for
the health care costs of illegal aliens,” says FAIR President Dan Stein. “Given
the opportunity to close loopholes that would cost the public billions of
dollars each year, Democrats on the committee unanimously rejected an amendment
that would bar illegal aliens from a national health care program.”
The cost of treating illegal aliens amounts to nearly $11 billion a year,
according to calculations done by the Federation for American Immigration
Reform (FAIR), a non-profit group that opposes illegal immigration. And that
cost is not expected to go away if a health insurance reform bill becomes law.
According to FAIR’s Director of Special Projects Jack Martin, illegal
immigrants presently cost U. S. taxpayers $10.7 billion a year for health care.
The numbers are contained in a report that FAIR plans to publish in the near
future.
“The current health care bill is looking as if it is leaving a very large
loophole for medical coverage being provided to illegal aliens,” Martin said.
So again, yes, the speaker of the House can say: "We've made no provision
for Health Care for Illegal Aliens". But, is she in fact telling you the
WHOLE truth or only half a truth. I am an independent voter and I, at this
point, have my opinion. You be the judge for your own opinion.
*
The politics of Healthcare Reform
from the AP -
"Immigration analyst James R. Edwards Jr. reported last week in National
Review that "no health legislation on the table requires federal, state or
local agencies -- or private institutions receiving federal funds -- to check
the immigration status of health-program applicants, so some of the money distributed
via Medicaid and tax credits inevitably would go to illegal aliens."
Moreover, the Senate Finance Committee plan creates a preference for illegal
aliens by exempting them from the mandate to buy insurance.
That's right. Lawabiding, uninsured Americans would be fined if they didn't
submit to the ObamaCare prescription.
Lawbreaking bordercrossers and deportation fugitives would be spared.
For years, advocates of uncontrolled immigration have argued that illegals
aren't getting free health care, and that even if they were, they'd not be
draining government budgets. The fiscal crisis in California gives lie to those
talking points. In March, the Associated Press reported that Sacramento and
Contra Costa counties were slashing staff and closing clinics due to the
prohibitive costs of providing nonemergency health services for illegals.
"The general situation there is being faced by nearly every health
department across the country, and if not right now, shortly," Robert M.
Pestronk of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told
the AP."
*
Congressman
Brian Bilbray, along with 55 other Members of Congress, is urging the leaders
of the United States House of Representatives to include a method of
enforcement for benefits under any new plan of nationalized health care. The
text of the letter follows:
September
15, 2009
|
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
H-232 United States Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
|
The Honorable John Boehner
Office of the House Republican Leader
H-204 United States Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
|
Dear
Madam Speaker and Republican Leader Boehner:
As
discussion on health care reform continues, we urge you to include measures
that will prevent illegal immigrants from receiving taxpayer-funded benefits in
any health care reform bill considered by the House. While the House bill
currently says illegal immigrants cannot get benefits, the statement is
meaningless because the bill contains no verification mechanism to ensure that
illegal immigrants will not receive benefits.
The
non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently issued some
troubling information on the immigration-related provisions of the current
health care bill, H.R. 3200. Specifically, the new CRS Report R40773, Treatment
of Noncitizens in H.R. 3200, points out the following:
- CRS states that H.R. 3200 "does not contain any
restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the
United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the
[taxpayer-subsidized Health Insurance] Exchange."
- While section 142(a)(3) of H.R. 3200 states the
responsibility of the Health Choices Commissioner to administer the
"individual affordability credits under subtitle C of title II,
including determination of eligibility for such credits," no specific
enforcement mechanism is outlined in the bill.
- CRS also notes that "there could be instances
where some family members would meet the definition of an eligible
individual for purposes of the credit, while other family members would
not. For example, in a family consisting of a U.S. citizen married to an
unauthorized alien and a U.S. citizen child, the U.S. citizen spouse and
child could meet the criteria for being a credit-eligible individual,
while the unauthorized alien spouse would not meet the criteria. H.R. 3200
does not expressly address how such a situation would be treated.
Therefore, it appears that the Health Choices Commissioner would be
responsible for determining how the credits would be administered in the
case of mixed-status families."
Our
constituents find these provisions unacceptable. The Pew Hispanic Center
estimated that there are almost two million families in the United States where
illegal immigrant parents have U.S.-born children, and even more mixed-status
families exist. If H.R. 3200 becomes law in its current form, billions in
taxpayer funds could go to those who are in our country illegally.
Most
of our concerns could be easily addressed by requiring individuals applying for
affordability credits to undergo citizenship verification using one of the
existing programs used for various social service programs. We urge you to
adopt language such as the Heller amendment (offered in the House Ways &
Means Committee during the markup of H.R. 3200, July 16, 2009) or the Deal
amendment (offered in the House Energy & Commerce Committee markup of H.R.
3200, July 31, 2009) in the final version of any health care reform legislation
to close these costly, unnecessarily loopholes.
Sincerely,
