Read this:
DEMOCRATS’ single most important domes tic proposal - universal health insurance - may blow up in Barack Obama’s face when voters are exposed to the deadly details.
Obama has said, proudly and often, “I am going to give health insurance to 47 million Americans who are now without coverage.” But are they “Americans?”
That 47 million statistic includes illegal immigrants - who virtually all lack insurance. In fact, about one in four of those lacking insurance is here illegally. And they are, by far, the group most in need of health insurance.
About 15 million of the remaining uninsured are eligible for Medicaid but haven’t signed up - mainly because they haven’t gotten sick. When they do, they enroll in Medicaid and we pick up the full tab for their health care relatively cheaply. (About 80 percent of each Medicaid dollar goes to nursing-home care for the elderly, only about 20 percent for the medical needs of the poor.)
The rest of the uninsured pool? Virtually all the children are eligible for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Some aren’t enrolled because the parents haven’t bothered, but most are eligible. That leaves about 20 million uninsured adults who are US citizens or legal immigrants. There are far better ways to handle their needs than to turn our entire health-care system upside down.
Care for illegals is the biggest unmet medical need in our nation, and Obama’s program targets it squarely. But do we really want to give them federally paid coverage equal to what US senators get, as Obama proposes?
Covering illegals adds dramatically to the cost of any program - and would encourage more folks to enter America illicitly.
Obama’s plan will likely have a horrific effect on some local health-care systems.
Illegals now get free emergency-room treatment for life-threatening conditions - as any other American who’s entered an ER in an area with lots of illegals recently well knows. (Three-quarters of the illegal-immigrant population is concentrated in five states: California, New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois.)
But now they’d be eligible for the entire range of medical services, all free of charge. That would trigger severe rationing: bureaucrats deciding who gets to see an oncologist, who can have an MRI - and even who can have bypass surgery and who’d die for lack of it.
These decisions would be made not on the basis of legal status but on the brutal facts of triage: Treat the 37-year-old illegal with his whole life to live before you spend scarce resources on an overweight, diabetic, 80-year-old citizen with high blood pressure who smokes.
John McCain hasn’t raised this issue, perhaps for fear of offending the Latino vote. But polling suggests the case against rationing of health care would be as persuasive to Hispanic-American citizens as it is to the rest of us. Nobody wants to die waiting in line - especially not behind someone who snuck in ahead of us.
McCain needs to hit the Obama plan for treating illegal immigrants to free, federally subsidized health insurance - and hit it hard.
Tags: Care, Coverage, Health, Illegal, Immigrants, Obama, Universal
He’s a racist Marxist. He’s for every aspect of our lives being controlled by the government.
Wait until he and his fellow liberals have to pay back the NEA. Their latest proposals include taxpayer funding of dental treatment for students among other perks. It would triple property tax rates.
the answer is toward the bottom of the page where the paragraph starts out saying “the sweeping overhauls” under A potent political issue
Yes he said he was for it i think that is wrong you should have to be a american to get that not break laws and get it
You have it right. Yes Obama wants the government to pay for everyone in America, especially the illegals.
I do believe he is for that. Illegal immigration will destroy America at the core-we need to deal with it first and foremost.
You are correct.
Yes he is!
Obama is counting on Richard Daily Jr. the man’s father is the one who coined the phrase” vote early and vote often” to get the illegal vote counted! Of course anything that will raise the taxes he is for, the man never worked for a living and pays little in taxes so what does he care about the average man
I’m afraid to say that almost all ‘flaming liberals’ are for healthcare for the illegals.
Face it, the illegal immigrants for the most part are hard working (too often better at their jobs and more willing to work hard than Americans on the same job) family’s that if given the chance would love to earn citizenship. Secondly, we could never deport them. So what must be done is get their tax, FICA, medicare money by giving worker permits and collecting. Heavy crackdowns on employers that get caught employing one without worker permits or that doesn’t collect the appropriate taxes. Finally, deport those with felonies and not renew the worker permits of those with excessive misdemeaner charges ie. 3 in three years or so.
The problem can be dealt with but only if someone has the guts to do it. McCain tried to but gave too much in the bi-partisan agreement, but at least he tried. Give Obama the leash and we will be much more bankrupt as a country than we are now.