Thursday, September 10, 2009

CIS: 6.6 million illegal immigrants could be covered by the health care bill

From the Center for Immigration Studies' website:
Based on our analysis of Census Bureau data, we estimate that there are 6.6 million uninsured illegal immigrants in the United States who could be covered by the new health care reform bill (HR 3200).

Even though HR 3200 states that illegal immigrants are not eligible for the proposed taxpayer-funded affordable premium credits, there is nothing in the bill to enforce this. An amendment was defeated in committee that would have required the use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, used by almost all other means-tested programs of this kind...

On July 16, an amendment by Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) that would have required use of the SAVE program to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving the affordable premium credits was defeated by the House Ways and Means Committee.

At present, 71 other means-tested federal programs require use of the SAVE system to prevent illegal immigrants and other ineligible non-citizens from accessing them...
Likewise, Rep. Joe Wilson explained to reporters on Thursday why he believed the bill would cover illegal aliens: "There were two different amendments on the bill that would have provided verification of persons having citizenship...," he said, "and both of those were defeated overwhelmingly. There were almost party line votes...

"I will tell you this. It [the outburst during the president's speech on Wednesday] was spontaneous. It was when he stated, as he did about not covering illegal aliens when I knew we'd had those two amendments. And I say that respectfully, and we need to discuss the issues and I'm happy to do that..."

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