Immigrants' money is no good here

Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nevada)
September 21, 2009
By John Brummett

It's all about passing health care reform without giving Republicans any more easy openings for demagoguery, which, rest assured, they'll take.

This, alas, is how American public policy gets made. It arises from the ashes of the holy hell that Republicans proved during August they can raise.

So the latest is that the Obama White House and Senate Democrats, running scared, are vowing never to take a red cent of an illegal immigrant's responsibly expended money.

Rep. Joe Wilson may have won the debate after all with that loathsome heckle.

First, Republicans profess outrage that illegal immigrants might benefit from any new universal health system. Fair enough.

A man here illegally shouldn't get any of the taxpayer-provided subsidies likely to be available for persons and families up to 400 percent of the poverty level through a new government-compiled private health insurance exchange.

So the Democrats specifically provide that no illegal immigrant may get any benefit from this bill.

Then Republicans say that's not enough. They say Democrats impose no enforcement or verification mechanism.

Giving yet more ground, the Democrats say they'll look anew at citizenship verification programs.

That's despite the fact that governors of both parties say such systems have been nightmares for Medicaid at the state level, costing more than they're worth, catching few violators and putting up unfair roadblocks to needy and fully entitled citizens.

Democrats say that maybe they'll extend these subsidies in the form of income tax credits, in which case an illegal immigrant trying to beat the system by filing for a subsidy could take his chances with the IRS.

Then Republicans complain that illegal immigrants could still buy health insurance from this new exchange merely by declining to seek any subsidies.

In other words, they might actually purchase these policies. They might actually pay for them all by themselves in full in cold hard-earned cash. They might actually assume responsibility for their families and for helping to limit our collective liability should one of them get badly hurt or gravely ill and require medical attention.

We can't have that. Next thing you know these illegal immigrants will be trying to give us some of their money to buy groceries in our supermarkets.

Thus the near-latest: Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Finance Committee, says his arduously negotiated health care bill will specifically bar an illegal immigrant not merely from buying a subsidized health policy through this exchange.

It will bar him from buying any policy outright at full price through this exchange, even at his full personal expense.

Guess what? That's still not enough for Republicans.

They want to say now that even a legal immigrant has to wait five years to get a subsidy.

Thus we'd have three forms of immigrants - legal, illegal and newly legal ones that Republicans still don't like.

This is all quite absurd.

Whether we should erect a border wall or execute a roundup of illegals or establish a path to earned citizenship - these are important matters to debate.

But whether it's better for the people working and living here to have health insurance while they're here so that we can spread our costs and limit our collective exposure, which is the very point of universal coverage - that's an entirely different question and one not at all hard to answer vigorously in the affirmative.

Especially when the guy just wants to pay for it himself.

Sadly, he'd just be town hall fodder.

John Brummett, an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock, is author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/En ... 00&start=4