Illegal Immigration and Health Care Reform

Why are the Republicans so adamant against the Public Option?  That's simple; it's because it will work.  Next to a single-payer system (which would save the most money) it is the best option for stopping the doubling costs of health care while insuring everyone.   The Insurance companies are terrified of this option and are spending billions buy off our representatives and on spreading lies with false advertising and on paying loud dissenters to shout down the people who are for it.  

I intend to post the truth about the negative objections and lies being spread on my next blogs.  I will take them one at a time and dissect it.  Today's blog is illegal immigration.

When Joe Wilson's outburst "You Lie" was debunked it didn't stop the right wing  from claiming that illegal immigrants would be able to get health care under Obama's proposals and the five bills under consideration for health care reform.

Here's the dirty little secret; It's just a straw man as another way of defeating health care reform.   In an article by Froma Harrop I found the  following:

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The House health-reform bill has an entire section titled, "No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens." Furthermore, it requires every worker to have coverage, while denying subsidies to illegal immigrants, whatever their income. In other words, illegal immigrants would have to obtain health insurance and pay full freight for it.

Republican foes of the legislation. The illegals will get around it. "Without the verification, you can't frankly believe it is serious," says Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas. Fair point. Let's address it.

As a practical matter, undocumented workers shy away from government programs that could expose their illegal status. A law passed in 2005 requires applicants to Medicaid, which insures poor people, to prove their citizenship. Two years later, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform studied Medicaid enrollments in five states (Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin). It found only eight illegal immigrants on the rolls.

But, says Georgia Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, "a lot of their kids are in the school system." That's true. The schools don't check for immigration status. Medicaid does. And so would the health care system now envisioned by Congress.

The administration has just started requiring any company seeking sizeable federal contracts to use the E-Verify system, a database containing Social Security and other records, to ensure that its workers are legal. (First it had to fight off a suit by the Chamber of Commerce and industry groups that use undocumented labor.) 

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who heads the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, is promoting biometric tools to replace the use of documents that can be counterfeited or stolen. Biometrics rely on such unique identifiers as fingerprints and the iris of the eye.

To sum it up, the Democrats' policies are already reining in illegal immigration, and the proposed health care reform would, if anything, contain it further. Those trying to stop reform should look elsewhere for scare tactics.

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When you search for facts instead of listening to the ones who are the shills for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. you find that the Single Payer system is the best way to reform our mess.  Okay, that's not on the table so the Public Option is the next best solution.  If we don't have that, the Insurance Industry that is only interested in profits will continue to run, and ruin, our health care system.