tell me again how expensive the wall is again
Posted on 11/17/2018 10:46:16 AM PST by bitt
I recently did an interesting interview with Dan Gorenstein, a health care reporter with station WHYY and NPR's radio business show Marketplace on the issue of tax-financed health care for unauthorized immigrants [1]. The piece that aired did not include any of my remarks, but I thought it would be useful to give readers my perspective on this knotty policy question based on both background research I did to prepare for the interview and follow-on research I did in light of the questions posed in the interview.
Current federal policy is to prohibit federal tax funding of health care to unauthorized immigrants through either Medicaid or Obamacare. Nevertheless, rough estimates suggest that the nation's 3.9 million uninsured immigrants who are unauthorized likely receive about $4.6 billion in health services paid for by federal taxes, $2.8 billion in health services financed by state and local taxpayers, another $3.0 bankrolled through "cost-shifting" i.e., higher payments by insured patients to cover hospital uncompensated care losses, and roughly $1.5 billion in physician charity care. In addition to these amounts, unauthorized immigrants likely benefit from at least $0.9 billion in implicit federal subsidies due to the tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals and another $5.7 billion in tax expenditures from the employer tax exclusion.
All told, Americans cross-subsidize health care for unauthorized immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year. Of this total, federal taxpayers provided $11.2 billion in subsidized care to unauthorized immigrants in 2016.
In this post, I describe in more detail current policy, current sources of funding for health care of unauthorized immigrants. In a follow-on post, I will offer four independent reasons federal tax funding for such care is a bad idea (that is, a reader need only accept one, not all, in order to conclude we should dispense with such..
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
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Democrats are stealing our money, to fund illegals, to gain votes. They are now going to use money to disrupt Trump’s agenda. The media talking heads will repeat their talking points, and do what they are told, or be removed from the Propaganda Machine.
Just so everyone understands...18 billion is NASA’s budget.
What’s worth more?
As Ocasio-Cortez has stated, “Just pay for it.”
$18+ BILLION could build a lot of miles of a secure border wall.
That has to be too low.
Democrats import illegal aliens to vote and then we pay the tab. I say we go to war, kill all the liberals, and start over.
The massive, political, progressive-left nanny-state is supported solely by massive spending and massive debt, in a printed, fiat currency and manipulated interest rates courtesy of the Federal Reserve.
tell me again how expensive the wall is again
Thanks for posting this.
Whenever I speak to liberals/progressives/democrats on this topic, I am told that immigration is a net economic gain for the country. For them this is an Article of Faith. Nothing can be said, no facts can be shown, that can counter their religious fervor.
This includes a friend who is health policy researcher at RAND, as was the author of the article.
Thanks also to other commenters.
Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC), who gained national notoriety for shouting, "You lie!" during an address by
President Barack Obama to a joint session of Congress, now says he's been "vindicated" for calling out the President.
On his campaign website, Wilson wrote that the President did, in fact, lie when he said that no money from the
health care overhaul would go to illegal immigrants. Wilson wrote that a $28.8 million grant recently awarded by
the Department of Health and Human Services to community healthcare centers -- of which $8.5 million is
earmarked toward migrant and seasonal workers -- has proven that Obama was lying.
https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-wilson-i-was-totally-right-after-all-obama-was-lying-2011-8
On September 9, 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson shouted at President
Barack Obama while Obama addressed a joint session of Congress
to outline his proposal for reforming health care During his address,
Obama said: "There are also those who claim that our reform effort
will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false the reforms I'm
proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."
"width=500">
There!
Fixed it.
Isn't $18.5 billion relatively close to one of the projected prices for Pres. Trump's wall?
Pro-Democratic activist judges are wrongly ignoring the following about citizenship / photo ID voter cards in order to vote for federal politicians.
This is because, evidenced by predictable alleged ballot box manipulation by Democratic state actors, states need such voter cards in order to comply with Section 2 of the 14th Amendment imo, Sec. 2 mandating penalty for ballot box manipulation by state actors.
”14th Amendment, Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens [emphasis added] twenty-one years of age in such State."
Note that Sec. 2 has been effectively changed, but not repealed, by subsequent voter rights amendments (19, 26).
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3706602/posts
Trump signs bill cementing cybersecurity agency at DHS
The Hill ^ | 11/16/2018 | Olivia Beavers
I read somewhere that we spend $135 billion a year on illegal immigrants.
18.5 billion is ridiculously low
It’s about 4.5 billion in Claifornia alone
Good cartoon. To most people to ‘tolerate’ means ‘with great self-control I will endure your insufferable opinions.”
Usually I save my breath. Except at FR.
I recently came across these quotations from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841):
“Men, it has been said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
and
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
18.5 billion? It’s sad but I have a hard time believing the number is that low.
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