From OneNewsNow

An immigration reform organization says a glaring loophole in the proposed Senate healthcare legislation (H.R. 3590) will potentially allow millions of illegal immigrants to be eligible for insurance, effectively tripling the financial burden on American taxpayers. 

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said Monday that the end is in sight on passage of a sweeping healthcare overhaul. The Democratic leader said the 10-year, nearly one-trillion-dollar Senate bill (would expand coverage to some 30 million uninsured and bar insurance company practices of denying coverage to those with a medical history. The Senate began its eighth day of debate on Monday.
 
Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform says technically the bill states that it does not cover illegal aliens. But there is a glitch, he says.
 
“The problem is that the verification procedures for proving eligibility are very lax,” says Mehlman. “And in fact, all somebody has to do is make a claim to citizenship and that pretty much gets them into the system. It doesn’t require the more stringent verification procedures that are already in place and being used successfully in many other government programs.”
 
Mehlman adds that according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office, the tab would grow substantially if those who are in the country illegally are granted taxpayer-funded medical coverage.
 
“Providing the full range of healthcare benefits to illegal aliens in the United States would raise the cost from about $11-billion a year now that the taxpayers have to pay, to more than $30-billion. So it would triple the cost burden on the American taxpayer,” he explains.
 
Democrats hope to finish the legislation by Christmas. Republicans are nearly unanimous in opposition.

Posted from Hot Air

Mark Tapscott discovers a nugget in the analysis provided by the Congressional Research Office on HR3200, the House version of ObamaCare coming to the floor.  While Barack Obama insists that the idea that ObamaCare will cover illegal immigrants is a “myth,” the CRS points out that the bill does nothing to prevent it.  Since HR3200 doesn’t require people to establish citizenship or legal residency before applying to exchanges for health insurance, including the public option, taxpayer money will certainly flow to illegal immigrants:

In what he called the “first myth” being spread by critics of his proposal for a government-run health care system, Obama said they are wrong in claiming illegal immigrants will be covered: “That is not true. Illegal immigrants would not be covered. That idea has not even been on the table.” Obama said.

Well, Mr. President, that idea must have been tucked under a stack of background briefing papers over there in the corner of the table because the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says this about H.R. 3200, the Obamacare bill approved just before the recess by the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA:

“Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.”

CRS reports do not get released to the public.  CRS offers private analysis to members of Congress on request, but rarely do they see the light of day.  However, David Freddoso got his hands on a copy of the 11-page analysis, “Treatment of Non-Citizens in HR3200″ late last night, and confirmed Tapscott’s reading:

In its subsection on health insurance subsidies (known as “affordability credits”), HR 3200 does state, “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.” That would seem to solve the problem, but it’s more rhetoric than reality. The bill contains no verification requirement or enforcement process for citizenship or legal residency, as exists for other federal benefit programs. The only verification required for the subsidies pertains to family income. Beyond that, as the CRS report notes, everything is left in the hands of the Health Choices Commissioner.

House Democrats defeated all attempts in committee to add an enforcement mechanism that would require proof of citizenship or legal residency for those getting subsidies.

CRS also notes that “undocumented aliens” who have a “substantial presence” in the US would be required to buy health insurance (page 4) through the exchanges in HR3200.  They would also become eligible for “emergency Medicaid,” although not normal Medicaid (page 6) for up to five years.

Read the rest of the column

Posted from National Review Online

Set aside Joe Wilson’s bad manners — what about the substance of his accusation? 
 
Mr. Wilson claims that various Democratic proposals wending their way through Congress will use U.S. taxpayer dollars to further subsidize health care for illegal immigrants. Democrats say this is not true, and the back-and-forth continues like this: Democrats say that there is nothing in pending legislation that explicitly covers illegal aliens. Republicans say, “Aha! But we offered amendments that would have specifically required more robust measures to keep illegals out of the system and you voted them down, leaving the back door open!” And Democrats respond, “No, we didn’t. We don’t need that, because Medicare and Medicaid and such already require documentation of legal status.” And then the Democrats will point to this report from that solomonic arbiter of fact, the CNN Truth Squad, which concludes: “A new report finds the bill could require illegal immigrants to buy coverage, but it clearly restricts subsidies to U.S. citizens and legal residents.” 

As Sarah Palin, critics of Van Jones, and those who seek to exclude Cass Sunstein from the collective czardom of the Obama administration have pointed out, there’s what the law says and there’s what the administrative apparatus does. When it comes to the question of whether government-run health-care programs will be used to subsidize illegal aliens, we need not confine ourselves to the realm of the hypothetical and the speculative. Helpfully, the government itself has taken a look at the issue from time to time.

Read the rest of the article

Posted from NumbersUSA by James Edwards

Just about the time the Center for Immigration Studies was holding a press briefing at the National Press Club about the immigration and health reform connection, proponents from President Obama on down were denying that illegal aliens would receive taxpayer-funded health care under pending legislation.

I’m here to tell you, as I told the Press Club crowd, the legislation on the table does, honest to goodness, effectively extend coverage to illegal aliens.

Take the premium subsidy in the House bill, H.R. 3200. This lies in the part of the legislation (Division A, Title II) that creates a Health Choices Administration, adds the infamous “public option,” sets up and runs the “exchange” clearinghouse for getting insurance, and controls a graduated premium subsidy program through allocation of “individual affordability credits.”

The subsidy, found in Section 242, will give a voucher to people earning between 133 percent of the official poverty level and 400 percent of that income level (or, up to about $88,000 a year for a family of four).

Legal immigrants certainly qualify under H.R. 3200 for this subsidy. Section 242(a)(1) makes eligible “an individual who is lawfully present in a State in the United States (other than as a nonimmigrant described in a subparagraph (excluding subparagraphs (K), (T), (U), and (V)) of section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act).”

A political fig leaf purports to keep illegal aliens from receiving the subsidy. Section 246 says, “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

However, reading the legislation as a whole, its glaring omission is any requirement to verify someone’s immigration or citizenship status. For instance, H.R. 3200 makes no reference to the verification system in current law that’s used for nearly all government welfare and other public programs. If lawmakers wanted enrolling agents, including bureaucrats at the new Health Choices Administration, to use the Systematic Alienage Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, the bill should include a reference and authorize SAVE’s application to this government program.

In other words, the silence of H.R. 3200 regarding SAVE and mandatory verification makes Section 246 just empty words. In fact, the Ways and Means Committee outright voted down an amendment by Rep. Dean Heller to require eligibility verification before qualifying someone to receive a taxpayer subsidy. Also, “lawfully present” covers a lot of ground. Does it include someone here under Temporary Protected Status, for instance? Again, the absence of eligibility verification requirements leaves open a lot of room for waste, fraud, and abuse.

A similar situation of setting up blinders occurs in H.R. 3200’s Medicaid provisions. Division B’s Title VII, Section 1701 expands Medicaid eligibility to those with incomes a third above the federal poverty level. This provision dictates that “the State shall accept without further determination the enrollment under this title of an individual determined by the Commissioner to be a non-traditional Medicaid eligible individual.” In other words, the bill prohibits asking any further questions about new Medicaid enrollees.

Rather, the bill section promotes “presumptive eligibility” concerning Medicaid expansion. Read it for yourself, right from Section 1702(a):

(ii) PRESUMPTIVE ELIGIBILITY OPTION- Pursuant to such memorandum, insofar as the memorandum has selected the option described in section 205(e)(3)(B) of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, the State shall provide for making medical assistance available during the presumptive eligibility period and shall, upon application of the individual for medical assistance under this title, promptly make a determination (and subsequent redeterminations) of eligibility in the same manner as if the individual had applied directly to the State for such assistance except that the State shall use the income-related information used by the Commissioner and provided to the State under the memorandum in making the presumptive eligibility determination to the maximum extent feasible. (emphasis added)

And, once again, the lack of any provision mentioning or requiring verification, mandatory use of the SAVE system under this part of the bill, or any other accountability requirement opens the process up to signing up illegal aliens for Medicaid.

In the Energy and Commerce Committee, a mandatory verification amendment was voted down when Rep. Nathan Deal offered it. A political figleaf amendment was added by voice vote, but the loopholes and potential for waste, fraud, and abuse remain wide open in the Medicaid provisions.

Whatever you think of health reform, a combination of things makes it certain that illegal aliens will receive government health coverage. The most obvious is the omission — heck, the outright rejection of corrective amendments — of eligibility verification requirements. The other factor is the designed ease of enrolling people in Medicaid, for “affordability credits,” and the like.

Bottom line, the health legislation Congress is considering establishes an “enroll now, don’t ask questions later” regime. That’s a recipe for covering more people, but many of whom may not actually qualify. A huge number are almost guaranteed to be illegal aliens or legal immigrants still in their first five years in the country who are supposed to turn to their visa sponsor for financial support. And having more people in a public program translates pretty quickly into higher costs. In this case, we’re talking on the order of tens and hundreds of billions of dollars.