Wingnuts don’t seem to realize they’re already paying for the health care of illegal aliens. Every time an uninsured or underinsured person gets treatment in an emergency room and can’t pay the bill, the cost is added to everyone else’s bill, and to insurance premiums. As far as I know, ERs are not turning people away who can’t prove citizenship.
But, shhhh, keep this entre nous. If this gets called to wingnut attention they’ll demand that ERs get proof of citizenship before they treat anyone. None of us will dare leave home without our passports, never mind our insurance cards. Sorry about your Grandma. We couldn’t treat her because we weren’t sure she was a citizen.
After Wednesday night’s heckling the Super Weasel team of Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Max Baucus (D-MT) hustled to do Rep. Joe Wilson’s bidding and close an imaginary loophole in the health care proposal. No one is proposing that any subsidies go to illegal aliens (see “Read the Bill“). But now Baucus and Conrad want to prevent illegal aliens from buying health insurance on the individual market with their own money.
This will have a direct cost to taxpayers since some verification mechanism will need to be put into place. It will also have an indirect cost to you and me and everyone we know—the vast majority of people, after all, aren’t undocumented immigrants but we’re all going to need to go through a citizenship check hassle before we buy health insurance. It will probably also make average premiums higher, since the exchanges will be left with a smaller risk pool and there’s no real reason to believe that the subset of undocumented immigrants who are capable of affording an unsubsidized insurance policy are below-average health risks. Last, of course, this will make the undocumented immigrant population sicker with negative public health consequences for their coworkers, friends, family, and the customers of the businesses they walk at.
There’s an old saying, “cutting off the nose to spite the face.” It refers to doing something for revenge or spitefulness that is really self-destructive. This describes the Right’s attitudes toward health care reform. Apparently it’s more important to punish illegal aliens than to provide health care for ourselves. Better to let 18,000 Americans die every year for lack of health care than to allow illegal aliens use the proposed exchanges to buy insurance with their own money. And you know if there are subsidies some illegal aliens will be able to scam the system; better to drive tens of thousands of Americans into medical bankruptcy than to let some illegal aliens have a few crumbs of benefits.
And let’s not even think about making sure agricultural and food service workers get flu shots. Epidemics are a small price to pay to be sure people aren’t getting benefits they don’t deserve. It’s a moral thing, see.
There is data showing that the enormous majority of uninsured and underinsured patients are citizens. But if some uninsured citizens really need health care, they can always move to Mexico.
I agree with Matt Yglesias except for this sentence:
It will probably also make average premiums higher, since the exchanges will be left with a smaller risk pool and there’s no real reason to believe that the subset of undocumented immigrants who are capable of affording an unsubsidized insurance policy are below-average health risks.
I personally doubt that ANY illegal immigrants have bought US health insurance, or plan to. First off, it’s so expensive that it’s not easy to pay for it with your minimum wage (or less) salary as a landscape gardener or grape picker. Secondly, illegal residents know that they have no legal rights, no valid social security number, etc, and they know they can be arrested and deported at any time, so they don’t enter into legal contracts – they remain footloose and ready to flee la migra at any time (note: this is also why they use emergency rooms as their “insurance” – they know they can’t be sued when they don’t pay, the worst that happens is they get deported). Thirdly (and least recognized), most Mexicans DO have health insurance, in Mexico. If they need surgery, they go back to Mexico and get it, at a fraction of the cost in the USA. Indeed, those Americans who are reasonably fluent in Spanish will, in many cases, travel to either Mexico or another Latin American country for “medical tourism”. Asia is also popular for this. I have personal experience, having had surgeries performed in Panama, Taiwan and Thailand – even without insurance, it’s a bargain compared to US prices.
Grandpa, whatever happened to that country called America?
It died, my boy.
What did it die of?
Stupidity.
How does a country die of stupidity?
I can’t explain it. You just had to see it to believe it. You had to be there.
Lucky thing you and Grandma got out, huh?
Very lucky.
Why did people stay?
They were either poor, unlucky, or stupid.
But mostly stupid, huh?
No, mostly poor and unlucky. The stupid were only a small group. But they took over.
But how did a small gr…
Later. It’s too nice a day. Let’s go fishing, like I used to with my Grandfather. Go get your rod.
But there are no fish left, Grandpa.
That’s ok. We can still sit by the river and pretend…
Couldn’t agree more with the nose-cutting analogy. Right-wing, reactionary American politics only started to make sense to me when I realised that one of their fundamental motivators is the fear that somewhere, somehow, a black, Hispanic, or poor person will get something from the government.
“None of us will dare leave home without our passports, never mind our insurance cards.”
It’ll be like those old World War II movies. You know, they’re on the street in Nazi Germany and it’s “Your papers, please” in a thick German accent.
Sorry about your Grandma. We couldn’t treat her because we weren’t sure she was a citizen.
Now there’s a “death panel” the Righties can believe in.