Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Will illegal immigrants be covered?

I am opposed to Obama-care, but not for all the same reasons as your typical right-wing nut. I am opposed to Obama-care because I think that it will neither lower costs or improve quality of care. I am also extremely skeptical of government and oppose this massive centralization of power by the Federal government. I will discuss my opposition and skepticism of this bill in later posts. For this post, I want to focus on the coverage of illegal immigrants. I have a solution; legalize every single one of these immigrants. I am disturbed by the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the right. Once again what is needed is immigration reform. There are issues that government should be dealing with: immigration reform, tort reform, removing restrictions on foreign nurses and doctors, loosening licensing requirements, education, and free trade, etc. These are the issues when the economy is good and when it is bad. I saw a letter to Newsday from a registered nurse who was saying that it would be terrible to bring in foreign nurses and that we need more American workers. Don't want those high skilled, productive workers ruining our economy by lowering the price of health care. Then the government would have no excuse to accumulate this massive amount of power. There can be no real conservative(limited government) movement if this bill passes because people will be dependent on government. Seniors will not vote against medicare and a dependent population will not vote against Obama-care once it is in place. This fear of foreign workers on both the distribution and consumption sides of health care is terribly unhelpful.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting view. I'm opposed to Obama-care for the same reasons. I never really thought about the illegals.

    I do think that we can't just chuck them all out. I'm with you on that. (I might put something up on my blog about it... hmmm).

    If Obama-care is passed, I am torn about whether they should be covered. They won't pay any of the taxes that will fund it, but they are humans as well.

    Well, if we allow them to legalize themselves it won't be a problem either.

    Either way, it is thinking I have not heard before. Bravo.

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  2. I agree 100%. Most illegal immigrants are coming into this country for work, healthcare, etc. If we legalize all immigrants (remember, this means illegal immigrants from all countries, not solely Mexico, where most of the racism is directed, they will be forced to pay taxes under the penalty of law. By doing this, we are facilitating the payment of this huge plan President Obama wishes to instal, and are granting immigrants the treatment they deserve in this country.

    Great job Jeremy, I enjoyed this post and found in very insightful. Also, we gotta chill before you go away to school, hit me up.

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  3. I'm confused. We are already paying for the healthcare of illegal/undocumented people. How will this differ? Will we be paying for earlier/preventative care, instead of waiting until their conditions become life threatening (aka much more expensive to treat)?

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  4. It won't differ. This is an example of fear-mongering on the right, and I was calling it out for what it is. This is no reason to be opposed to universal care. I don't think, however, that preventative care is by definition cheaper. Upcoming post about this as well. It might be good public health policy, but not necessarily cheaper.

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