Hope and Fail

Saying health care reform won’t cover illegal immigrants

During an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, President Obama said he doesn’t support health care reforms that include coverage for illegal immigrants, with the exception of children.

But just four days before, Democrats in the House defeated an amendment that would enforce a provision barring illegal immigrants from using the government plan the president is pushing.

From CBS News:

Katie Couric: Do you think any illegal immigrant should be eligible for health care under the new plan?

President Obama: No.

Katie Couric: No. Why not?

President Obama: First of all, I’d like to create a situation where we’re dealing with illegal immigration so that we don’t have illegal immigrants. And we’ve got legal residents or citizens who are eligible for the plan. And I want a comprehensive immigration plan that creates a pathway to achieve that.

The one exception that I think has to be discussed is how are we treating children? Partly because, if you’ve got children, who may be here illegally, but are still in playgrounds, and at schools and potentially are passing on illnesses, and communicable diseases, that’s not …

Katie Couric: Aren’t getting vaccinated.

President Obama: That aren’t getting vaccinated. That’s, I think, a situation in where you may have to make an exception.

But on Friday, the House committee working on the bill voted down a amendment from Rep. Dean Heller, R-NV, that would have made those seeking government health services to prove they are eligible.

From the Examiner:

The Democrats moved on Friday to allow an estimated 12 million illegal aliens into the proposed health care legislation. A Republican-backed amendment that would have prevented illegals from receiving free health care by checking citizenship status was defeated by Democrats in a mostly party-line vote of 23 to 18.

The plan known as the Heller amendment was written by Rep. Dean Heller, R-NV, and wanted to include clauses that mandated checks similar to E-Verify in order to qualify for government subsidized health insurance.

The Heller amendment said, “It would better screen applicants for subsidized health care to ensure they are actually citizens or otherwise entitled to it.”

The two identification processes the Heller amendment would use are programs the federal government already employ; The Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE).

The bill, in its current form, does state that, “For purposes of this division, the term ‘affordable credit eligible individual’ means, subject to subsection (b), an individual who is lawfully present in a State in the United States.” However, there is no enforcement mechanism, as Pat Austin points out:

The House bill may “explicitly exclude” illegals, but there’s not one thing in there to prevent their access to coverage or to even verify who is legal and who isn’t. That’s usually referred to as a loophole.

What comes after that would then be the “sudden realization” that we’re covering all these illegals, about to end up like California on a national scale, and then you have to either re-do what you’ve already passed, write new laws, or just make the illegals legal.

If Obama doesn’t want the new government plan to cover illegal immigrants, why isn’t pressuring Democrats in Congress to pass such a provision? Especially since it wouldn’t add to the bureaucracy and included measures to guard against fraud, as Michelle Malkin notes:

Nevada GOP Rep. Dean Heller’s measure would have enforced income, eligibility, and immigration verification screening on all Obamacare patients. Unlike most everything else stuffed into the House Democrats’ plan, the citizenship vetting process would not have required building a new bureaucracy. Rep. Heller proposed using existing state and federal databases created years ago to root out entitlement fraud.

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