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The World’s Matthew Bell does some fact checking on claims (and counterclaims) that illegal immigrants would be excluded from government health benefits under the health care reform plans being debated in Washington.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. President Obama today picked up where he left off last night in his push for healthcare reform.
BARACK OBAMA: I am confident the plan that we’ve put forward is the right plan for the American people. I continue to be open to suggestions and ideas from all quarters – house members, senate members, Democrats, Republicans, and outside groups. What we cannot do is stand pat. What we can’t do is accept a status quo that is bankrupting families, businesses, and our nation.
WERMAN: The president also said he accepted an apology from South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson. Last night the congressman heckled Mr. Obama. He yelled, “You lie” just as the president said that healthcare reforms would not apply to illegal immigrants. We’ll have more about that breach of protocol in a few minutes. First The World’s Matthew Bell has been doing some fact checking. He explores how Democratic healthcare plans would deal with immigrants – both legal and illegal.
MATTHEW BELL: Healthcare reform and illegal immigration – two contentious issues that when combined apparently got the best of Congressman Wilson. But he’s far from the first person in weeks to become animated over the suggestion that illegal immigrants might receive new benefits through healthcare reform. Questions about this notion came up during town hall meetings over the summer and at protests like this one during a presidential visit to New Hampshire last month.
PROTESTOR: They should be sent on the first bus one way back to where they came from. We don’t need illegals. Send them home with a bullet in their head the second time.
BELL: Last night president Obama attempted to put the issue to rest. He said the claim that reform efforts would provide insurance to illegal immigrants is false and that reforms he’s proposing would not apply to people here in the US illegally. But Steven Camerota isn’t buying it. He’s with the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. The group advocates for stronger limits on all immigration into the US.
STEVEN CAMEROTA: What we have right now is analogous to a speed limit sign on a highway that the police have said they’re never going to patrol. So the sign is there – the law is there – but the enforcement provision is not.
BELL: Camerota says yes there is language in healthcare reform legislation being debated now that says illegal immigrants are not eligible for government subsidies but he says the legislation doesn’t include reasonable enforcement measures.
CAMEROTA: There’s a program called the save system which runs people’s names through databases to make sure that they’re entitled to the programs that they’re trying to sign up for. That provision [INDISCERNIBLE] left out of this bill and then when it was voted on in committee it was killed.
BELL: But advocates of the current reform efforts say it’s a work in progress and it’s not clear yet what kind of verification measures will be used to make sure that undocumented immigrants don’t receive benefits they’re not entitled too. The enforcement mechanisms used by government programs like Medicaid will stay in place and whatever new programs are created they will include a system for determining eligibility as well.
LEIGHTON KU: This is clearly is an example of where people are trying to raise a boogieman that does not exist.
BELL: Leighton Ku is a professor of health policy at George Washington University.
KU: It is true that the health reform bills that are being considered by congress and what the president is considering would not provide any federal subsidies for the undocumented. However one of the points that’s come up as a sticking point periodically in the senate was whether legal immigrants would be eligible to participate in the health insurance exchanges and to get some of the federal subsidies that were being considered as a way of making health insurance more affordable for low and moderate income people.
BELL: Ku says giving legal immigrants access to health insurance pools is probably good policy and good economics. As a group, immigrants tend to be younger and healthier and they use health services than native-born Americans. That means making health insurance to legal immigrants could actually lower health premiums for everyone. For The World I’m Matthew Bell.
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I live in the UK where healthcare is free to all, however illegal immigration has put such a strain on the system that government spending has nearly doubled, our taxes just keep going up as a result.