08/25/2009
At least two attempts have been made to require identification to receive treatment under Obamacare and have been voted down by Democrats bowing to the demands of the Hispanic caucus which insists that the bill be free of any citizenship ID requirement. Obama is playing word games to BS his way through because he knows that the American people strongly reject including illegal aliens: 80 percent of voters polled objected in a June Rasmussen survey.One example of Obama obscuring the truth was his August 20 radio interview with Michael Smerconish:
None of the bills that have been voted on in Congress, and none of the proposals coming out of the White House propose giving coverage to illegal immigrants — none of them. That has never been on the table; nobody has discussed it. So everybody who is listening out there, when you start hearing that somehow this is all designed to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants, that is simply not true and has never been the case.
Okay. Nowhere in the bill does it say "Illegal aliens are welcome to steal free healthcare from the American taxpayer." But the legislation has none of the normal citizenship verification (such as the documents needed to receive Medicaid), so the door is open for everyone on the planet. The Democrats' wanton profligacy tells the world to bring on those kiddies needing organ transplants and other expensive procedures: America is at your service. The Dems are acting to bury us in further unnecessary debt in an act of economic treason.
The video below (Citizenship Verification Should Be Used For Government-Run Health Plan) shows Congressman Dean Heller (R-NV) offering his amendment in committee, which was defeated by the Democrat majority.
Congressman Nathan Deal (R-GA) submitted a similar amendment, which was also defeated by the Democrats. [WATCH]
During the Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up of the Democrat healthcare reform proposal, Rep. Deal offered an amendment to ensure that illegal immigrants are not allowed to get US taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits. The amendment offered by Rep. Deal would maintain the requirement in current law that all State Medicaid programs verify the citizenship status and identity of all applicants for Medicaid coverage. Rep. Deal was the author of this citizenship-verification requirement when it was originally enacted in 2006, and this amendment would have prevented the Democrats’ health reform bill from undermining this requirement. Unfortunately, the amendment was defeated on a largely party-line vote of 28 Yeas and 29 Nays.
Last week’s CIS healthcare panel [Transcript] underlined the hazard of having open borders to the third world while offering the magnet of first-world medicine free to them. Robert Rector emphasized that point:
If we were to look at the current health-care reform legislation, this takes an unprecedented step in opening up the U.S. welfare system to illegal immigrants. Under the current law, really forever, we have had a system of identity checks that largely prevent adult illegal immigrants from getting onto these means-tested welfare programs. You have to be able to substantiate that you're in the country legally and you have to be able to substantiate that you, if you’re a legal immigrant, that you’ve been here over the time limits for eligibility.The health-care reform legislation turns that on its back and tramples it into the dust. It basically says we will not verify; we will not check. We have a complete open door for every illegal immigrant, current and in the future, to simply enroll and receive benefits under this program. We not only will not check them at the door; we will not check them once they begin to receive the benefits. I would say if you’re going to do that with respect to health care, why would you not also establish the same precedent with respect to food stamps, to public housing, to the Earned Income Tax Credit and so forth. [ … ]
I believe that under this legislation, we will begin to draw the seriously ill from all over the world to begin to come here to receive free medical treatment. And once you hook these individuals up to the dialysis machine or whatever it is, we're very unlikely, as a society, to pull the plug and say get out of here. It is an absolutely mind-boggling precedent that’s being established here. If we look overall at the cost of means-tested welfare — that is, again, aid that is targeted to lower-income people; Medicaid, public housing, food stamps and so forth — what we find that is over the next decade, the United States will spend $1.5 trillion on means-tested welfare for lower-skilled immigrants — those with a high school degree or less: $1.5 trillion.
It’s a recipe for economic disaster, brought to us by the Democrat party at the direction of the Hispanic caucus.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.