D.A. King: Is Obama-care to include illegal aliens?

D.A. King: Is Obama-care to include illegal aliens?
Published: 07/22/2009

By D.A. King
Guest Columnist



In the rush by the Obama administration to take over American health care, we should be asking how the more than 20 million illegal aliens in America fit in. What about the illegals and government-provided health insurance? The answer depends on who you can hear. If you are a liberal, it may depend on how you "feel."


You may not have heard about the Heller amendment to H.R. 3200 in Congress. Known as "America's Affordable Health Choices Act, the legislation is one of several pending "health care reform" bills. It lacks language that would prevent illegal aliens who have escaped capture at our borders from accessing Obama's proposed universal coverage.

U.S. Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) recently offered an amendment to the bill during the House Ways and Means Committee markup that would require the use of existing citizenship verification tools to determine eligibility for taxpayer-funded health care benefits.

The Heller amendment was defeated along party lines last week. How does that make you feel?

Welcome to one of the best kept secrets you likely will not hear about in the mainstream media. The same out-of-control government that has refused to secure our borders in a war on terror - I mean "man-caused disaster" - may soon be in charge of your health care and most members of the party in charge want to extend that universal coverage to illegal aliens.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than a million people were apprehended trying to enter the U.S. illegally in fiscal year 2008. As Roy Beck, director of the respected Washington D.C. pro-immigration control organization, NumbersUSA, notes, "It is the growth among the uninsured that is helping drive the political effort to change the health care system. Previous studies have shown that illegal aliens account for nearly all of the growth in the uninsured in recent years."

The best description this long time American has heard yet of the scheme comes from James Edwards in the National Review: We are "importing the uninsured."

To paraphrase something heard often of late: If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free and available to anyone who can unlawfully slip into the country in search of a better life.

At least one Dem seems to have concerns. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters in May that illegals would not be included. "We're not going to cover undocumented aliens, undocumented workers," Baucus told the Dallas Morning News. "That's too politically explosive."

Indeed. Not to mention expensive. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in 2004 California's estimated cost of unreimbursed medical care was $1.4 billion. Texas estimated its cost at $850 million annually, and Arizona at $400 million.

Like most who study the illegal immigration crisis, Montana's Baucus, a key Democrat in the health care debate, probably understands that according to analyses by the Center for Immigration Studies and the U.S. Census Bureau, somewhere around 22 percent of the uninsured "Americans" are not Americans at all. They are non-citizens, many here in violation of our immigration laws.

Here is where it gets even more politically explosive. Imagine that Congress and the president can somehow pull off the takeover of the American health-care system - and are forced to do it without initially including illegal aliens in their universal coverage.

We shouldn't forget the next agenda for Obama and Congress.

One of Obama's campaign promises was to legalize now largely unemployed black-market labor during his first year in office. Doing so would make these ultra-low income residents eligible for a large variety of taxpayer-funded benefits now kept from them solely because of their unlawful status.

"Obama-Care" could include full coverage national health insurance for illegals. Not exactly a deterrent to illegal immigration. si?

One well-funded group working hard to make this apparently secret scam become reality is the radical open-borders National Council of La Raza ("La Raza" meaning "The Race" in English).

Reports of warnings given in recent La Raza seminars such as: "You must go out into your communities, use words like 'streamline', use phrases like 'all workers' and 'all families' because if the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it," is likely something you haven't heard on the evening news either.

It is time to rise up, America.


D.A. King, a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration heads the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society, www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

www.mdjonline.com