Posted on 11/04/2009 9:45:50 AM PST by La Lydia
The debate over health care for illegal immigrants continues to percolate in Congress despite the Obama administration’s efforts to put it to rest, with lawmakers in both houses also wrangling over how much coverage to provide for immigrants who have settled in the country legally. Some Republicans favor excluding immigrants who have been legal permanent residents for less than five years, as well as all illegal immigrants.
Democrats broadly agree that illegal immigrants should be excluded, but many want all legal permanent residents to be able to participate in proposed health insurance exchanges and receive subsidized coverage if they qualify.
Latino leaders, worried that Congress might quietly cut back benefits for legal immigrants, have started an 11th-hour campaign to eliminate waiting periods for them in the proposed legislation and to cancel the existing five-year wait for Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Under some plans being considered by Congress, more than one million legal permanent residents and about seven million illegal immigrants who currently have no health insurance would be excluded from coverage, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute...
Any proposal under discussion would leave California with the largest population of uninsured residents, as many as 1.4 million legal and illegal immigrants...California’s health system has been crippled by the soaring costs of caring for 6.8 million residents with no insurance, a figure that includes about 4 million American citizens...
“You can either keep those immigrants healthy now, or exclude them and wait until they get really sick, then pay for it down the line,” said Prof. Steven P. Wallace, associate director of the U.C.L.A. research center. “If you don’t pay now, you’re going to pay for them later.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
The fact that this is even being debated is very troublesome. What have we become?
This is a problem created by Democrat health care “reform”.
Legal, permanent residents already have access to employer provided or individually purchased health insurance, just like American citizens.
Obamacare would put their coverage in jeopardy, by replacing private insurance with a public plan that might not include legal immigrants.
If we simply stick to private insurance, the problem is solved.
ping
“Any proposal under discussion would leave California with the largest population of uninsured residents, as many as 1.4 million legal and illegal immigrants...California’s health system has been crippled by the soaring costs of caring for 6.8 million residents with no insurance, a figure that includes about 4 million American citizens...”
Yes, California, where they hand out CASH to senior illegal aliens that exceeds many of us ‘citizen’s’ social security!
-—see the document here:
Wonder why California is broke??? Senior Illegal aliens!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2330541/posts
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