Obamacare Would Give Preference To Illegals Over American Citizens

Here is another example of how Barack Obama and the Democrats puts the needs of America secondary to their political ambitions with non-Americans. If the socialized health care package currently being created by the Senate Finance Committee goes through, millions of illegals will be given preference over legitimate American citizens when it comes to receiving and having to pay for health care.

From Michelle Malkin at Town Hall:

Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee defeated an amendment that would have prevented illegal aliens from using the so-called "public health insurance option." Every Democrat on the panel voted against the measure. Nevada GOP Rep. Dean Heller's measure would have enforced income, eligibility and immigration verification screening on all Obamacare patients.

And she asks a very good question:

If the congressional majority are truly committed to President Obama's quest to wring cost savings from the system, why won't they adopt the same anti-fraud checks imposed on other government health and welfare beneficiaries? Maybe an intrepid reporter could ask the president at his next Obamacare show to explain.

But given that Obama scripts all of his press conferences and tells reporters what questions they can or cannot ask, don't count on it.

And despite the fact that the Dems claim coverage for illegals is "too politicaly explosive" to happen, reality is bearing out differently:

Obama lit the fuse in February when he signed the massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. That law loosened eligibility requirements for legal immigrants and their children by watering down document and evidentiary standards -- making it easy for individuals to use fake Social Security cards to apply for benefits with little to no chance of getting caught. In addition, Obama's S-CHIP expansion revoked Medicaid application time limits that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law. Immigration activists see the provisions as first steps toward universal coverage for illegals. ... [T]he Senate Finance Committee plan creates a new preference for illegal aliens by exempting them from the mandate to buy insurance. That's right. Law-abiding, uninsured Americans would be fined if they didn't submit to the Obamacare prescription. Law-breaking border-crossers, visa-overstayers and deportation fugitives would be spared.

And if that wasn't enough, many illegals are adding insult to injury like illegal alien Jose Lopez:

"I'm just mad," illegal alien Jose Lopez told the Los Angeles Times last year after receiving two taxpayer-subsidized liver transplants while impatiently awaiting approval for state health insurance. Now, multiply that sense of entitlement by 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants. Welcome to the open-borders Obamacare nightmare.

And despite the claims of immigration amnesty advocates that illegals are not already getting free health care, one need only look at the fiscal crisis in California and the fact that they are cutting staff and closing clinics due to the cost of providing free non-emergency care to illegals. Texas paid $1.3 billion for illegals in 2006 and Medicaid for illegals rose 28% in North Carolina.

Socialized health care was supposed to reduce costs for Americans, not increase them.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Obamacare For Illegal Aliens
Michelle Malkin
TownHall.com
July 22, 2009

A Look At Socialized Medicine Through The Eyes Of A British Oncologist

Now that health care reform is back in the news, let's look at what is happening in countires that already have socialized health care, or more accurately, rationed health care.

The best way to do that is to get the information straight from someone who works within such a system. In this case, we have Dr. Karol Sikora, a practicing oncologist and professor of cancer medicine at Imperial College School of Medicine in London.

Dr. Sikora writes:

One of the more unproductive elements of President Obama's stimulus bill is the $1.1 billion allotted for "comparative effectiveness research" to assess all new health treatments to determine whether they are cost-effective. It sounds great, but in Britain we have had a similar system since 1999, and it has cost lives and kept the country in a kind of medical time warp. As a practicing oncologist, I am forced to give patients older, cheaper medicines. The real cost of this penny-pinching is premature death for thousands of patients -- and higher overall health costs than if they had been treated properly: Sick people are expensive.

And dead family members exact a heavy price from the heart. I've previously posted about many of the horror stories that come out of countries with nationalized health care systems. Here are a few:

Another Example Of The Horrors That Socialized Medicine Will Bring Us
84rules
March 19, 2009

A Look At Three Socialized Health Care Systems: Dr. Walter Williams Column
84rules
March 4, 2009

Socialized Medicine: Enforcing Your Duty To Die
84rules
February 16, 2009

Clearly, there is a major problem with socialized health care systems. Now, some of you libs would respond that the same thing is happening here in the U.S. with our privatized system. I say that would be a misrepresentation. You see, if 400 patients died at a U.S. hospital that way they did at Britain's NHS run Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals, it would be the lead story on CNN and other leftist leaning networks for at least two weeks. But CNN isn't running any such story. From this we can conclude that the problems of a socialized health care system have not manifested themselves in our privatized system.

Continuing on with Dr. Sikora's analysis:

As the government takes increasing control of the health sector with schemes such as Medicare and SCHIP (State Children's Health-care Insurance Program), it is under pressure to control expenditures. Some American health-policy experts have looked favorably at Britain, which uses its National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to appraise the cost-benefit of new treatments before they can be used in the public system. If NICE concludes that a new drug gives insufficient bang for the buck, it will not be available through our public National Health Service, which provides care for the majority of Britons. ... Partly as a result of these restrictions on new medicines, British patients die earlier. In Sweden, 60.3 percent of men and 61.7 percent of women survive a cancer diagnosis. In Britain the figure ranges between 40.2 to 48.1 percent for men and 48 to 54.1 percent for women.

And it is not only the restriction on new drugs that are having an effect. Delayed detection and delayed treatment also contribute the the low cancer survival rates in the U.K. These delays result from control of treatment procedures being passed from patient/doctor to some bureaucrats sitting in some air-conditioned office somewhere and none of whom have a medical degree.

Where do the bureaucrats get that control from? Read on:

Having a centralized "comparative effectiveness research" agency would also hand politicians inappropriate levels of control over clinical decisions, a fact which should alarm Americans as government takes ever more responsibility for delivering health care -- already 45 cents in every health-care dollar.

And would socialized medicine really mean universal coverage? No. It would mean rationed coverage with the most politically powerful ailments getting the most treatment:

In Britain, the reality is that life-and-death decisions are driven by electoral politics rather than clinical need. Diseases with less vocal lobby groups, such as strokes and mental health, get neglected at the expense of those that can shout louder. This is a principle that could soon be exported to America.

So, are you ready for the government to deny treatment to your pneumonia-suffering child because the gay lobby demanded that more resources go to treat (i.e. be rationed for) AIDS patients? Or are you ready to see your wife, mother or sister suffer from breast cancer because the government delayed the tests that could have detected the disease, delayed the treatments and denied the medicines that could have cured the disease?

If so, you are ready for socialized (rationed) medicine.

The majority of us do not want this to happen.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Karol Sikora: This Health Care 'Reform' Will Kill Thousands
Dr. Karol Sikora
New Hampshire Union Leader
May 12, 2009

Revised SCHIP Still Has Loophole For Illegals

If you were the supervisor or manager of a buisness and your employees kept making the same mistake over and over and over again dispite the fact that you made it very, very clear about how things are to be done, would you keep those employees on or fire them?

Most bosses would fire them. That is what we need to do with the current Congress. Fire them. Relieve them of their duties. Put them out to pasture.

Why?

Because we've been telling them for over a year now that we do not want illegal aliens to be given any kind of amnesty at all. But either Congress still doesn't get it or they are deliberately thumbing their collective noses at us. Their latest attempt to pull the wool over the voters' eyes is the revised SCHIP bill. According to the Washington Times:

The revised children's health insurance bill that Congress is about to send to President Bush still has loopholes that both illegal aliens and ineligible legal immigrants could exploit to join the program, a new Heritage Foundation analysis shows. Under the bill, those applying for the State Children's Health Insurance Program would not have to prove citizenship. Instead, they only would have to provide a valid Social Security number — something most legal immigrants and many illegal aliens already have, said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, whose analysis is being released today. "If you're illegal, you're going to have to come with a valid but bogus Social Security number. If you're a legal permanent resident, you have a Social Security number, it's just a piece of cake for you to walk in," Mr. Rector said. He said the SCHIP bill that Congress passed would undo the 1996 welfare policy that restricted most public benefits to legal immigrants who have been in the country for at least five years. The new bill doesn't change that requirement, but only requires states to ask for a Social Security number, which Mr. Rector said means ineligible immigrants could sign up. "You couldn't be clearer in their saying, 'We really don't care about that five-year time period,' " he said. Illegal aliens who have stolen a valid Social Security number could also join, he said. Democratic leaders in Congress said Friday that they will send the SCHIP bill to Mr. Bush and force him to make good on his threat to veto it.

How many different ways are they going to try to give amnesty to illegals? If you were the boss, would you keep employees like this around? No, you wouldn't.

We need to send them their pink slips.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Revised SCHIP still has loophole for illegals
Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
December 3, 2007