Medicare without Taxation

Health care reform must address illegal immigrants

By Yiren Lu

It is indicative of the sad state of our nation’s health care debate that Rep. Joe Wilson’s exclamation “You lie!” is now more famous than what Obama was actually lying about. Even sadder, I perfectly understand this misplacement of interest. Obama’s speech lasted 47 minutes and went from well-prepared to boring within five. If anything, Wilson’s insertion was a refreshing albeit inappropriate distraction from Obama’s waxed eyebrows and Nancy Pelosi’s décol­letage.

So for those of you who haven’t re-watched what Obama said to incur Wilson’s wrath, here’s the recap: Obama claimed that certain Palpatinian forces were trying to trip up his reform by claiming it would provide coverage for illegal immigrants. He declared this patently untrue (interjection here). And if you want to be technical, Wilson was right. The proposed legislation would create a health in­surance marketplace, including private and public options, where Americans could shop for health care coverage. Illegal immigrants would be welcome to the marketplace as well; they just wouldn’t get any federally subsidized discounts. Thus, by dint of the universal availability of the public option, taxpayers would be forced to support illegal immigrants.

But it’s hard to imagine a more irrelevant line of reasoning than the one that led us to this conclu­sion. If we’re dropping $1 trillion to create the public option, even the grossest amount illegal immigrants could siphon off would seem paltry in comparison. From a different standpoint, precluding social ser­vices for illegal immigrants has never been an abso­lute in America. Access to K-12 education, commu­nity infrastructure, and public welfare is universal, with or without legal status.

In fact, the health care system in place right now denies illegal immigrants Medicare and Med­icaid but covers their emergency room visits. What results is the delayed treatment of illness or injury in its early stages, skyrocketing emergency room costs when it escalates, and bankrupted hospitals.

Given our present assumptions, we’re stuck in a lose-lose situation. Health care reform will unavoid­ably contain loopholes for illegal immigrants, es­pecially in cases of mixed legal and illegal families. On the other hand, state governments are paying billions of dollars every year in illegal coverage as it is. We foot the bill either way. To try to determine which one comes out higher is a futile exercise.

But the picture does not have to be so grim. Health care reform in America has come at the ex­pense of alterior reform. On the hill and in the me­dia, it is being discussed as a deus ex machina: its resolution resolves everything

In reality, though, it doesn’t. It might validate a presidency and save a party, yes, but it will not make the ozone re-knit itself, the economy bounce back, or Osama Bin Laden come out of his hidey-hole. Health care is the foundation of many tenets of society, but not all of them. Health is determined by many factors beyond the purview of the federal government.

That’s what makes illegal immigrant health care difficult to gauge at this point. Ultimately, its solution lies in immigration reform, not health care reform. Until we can control the borders and de­finitively establish the fate of those already here il­legally, we will be unable to reduce the costs of their health care, let alone their impositions on a myriad of social services. Amnesty, border walls, drug car­tels, and deportations – they are components of a seemingly separate debate that must be incorpo­rated into this one.

And as we conservatives proceed with this is­sue, as we bemoan the public option and propose more moderate steps of our own, we must keep in mind that any health care solution dismissing the il­legal immigration problem is no solution at all.

Ignoring that, the next ones in line for a Wilson tirade will be us.