Ah! Excellent. Thank you for clarifying. I missed that in all of the fray.
OK.
I don’t know where you live, but here in SW Missouri a lot of Latin Americans work on farms. I don’t know who has papers & who doesn’t. I don’t need to know. (Or I didn’t, until the Leg wrote that stupid law a little while back saying I could be jailed for aiding an illegal. Guess what law I would happily break?) Eat fruit, ever? It’s picked by migrant workers. Eat poultry? Mesoamericans in the poultry plants.
They subsidize cheap food, they pay taxes. Get a grip.
If it’s voluntary, is it also self-funding? 'Cos funding that with low incomes should be hilarious.
It is more than letting them bleed on the Emergency Room floor.
Anyone without insurance, be it an illegal immigrant or American citizen, use the ER for their medical care. Period (I suppose there are some free clinics available as well). Why? Because that is the only thing they can access with no ability to pay for the colossal costs.
Now, ever been in an ER lately? People with gaping head wounds and bleeding out on the ER floor are somewhat rare. Lots and lots of people in there are there for stuff that is not even remotely life threatening. Not even broken bone stuff. Might just be a cold that a visit to a family doctor could have dealt with for a few hundred dollar visit.
The ER cannot assume anything however. That seemingly minor nausea might be a prelude to a hemorrhaging ulcer or it might be that pickle you ate earlier. Flu or meningitis? They don’t know. They have to assume everything could be serious. If they don’t they open themselves to a lot of liability. So, they treat everyone and test them to be sure something more serious is not afoot.
Now instead of a few hundred dollar doctor bill you have a few thousand dollar ER bill. A cost we all pay for one way or another.
Don’t get me wrong, I lean more towards amnesty (as long as they pay taxes)
I do love me some fruit!
So let me get this right, if it benefits the American populace, those doing so should pay no taxes as they already are?
You just need to look at the whole picture.
How much in taxes do you suppose these workers could contribute? Being illegal they are probably paid below minimum wage. If you paid them minimum wage and benefits and all that jazz you will raise the cost of your fruit and chicken dramatically. You may well put those US companies plain out of business (and they pay taxes and have other US employees who pay taxes). Now the lot of them are on the dole.
Dunno where it all washes out but I am willing to bet the relatively minor contribution they would make in tax payments is more than offset by the taxes they would be able to pay.
If you like, look at their cheap labor as the US already collecting a tax from them in a roundabout way. You (you you as well as general you) benefit from their cheap labor in a myriad ways. Og forbid they benefit a bit from your labor back.
Even without amnesty you’ll be able to enjoy your fruits and vegetables. For most hand-picked foods, labor accounts for only 10% of the total cost. So, if a head of lettuce costs $1.00 and we DOUBLE the cost of labor, you’ll have to shell out $1.10.
I know this already. I think Cheesesteak laid it out pretty nicely. Are you equating “attending to people who show up at the ER” with “medical care”?
10% of the cost is not a natural law. If you did away with illegals, the cost of labor would presumably skyrocket, assuming you can find the Americans to go into the fields to pick the lettuce at all. This might actually be a good thing economically, since draining off unskilled workers into the fields would cause a shortage and force other employers, like fast food places, to raise wages, which would cut into their profitability, which would reduce the compensation of CEOs, which would cause the whole economy to crash!
(Sorry, got carried away there.)
The real problem is that this is a classic case of the free market at work, and of government intervention to try to cut down on border crossings being unable to counteract the real economic incentives of workers to come here. And clearly American businesses are just as incented to hire illegals as they are to come. It is the equivalent in a sense of outsourcing to China - making use of lower paid workers for improved competitiveness. If you aren’t against one, you shouldn’t be against the other.
They also pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems without a hope of ever getting anything back from it.
So these small government (don’t intrude on my personal life types wanted everyone to have to prove citizenship before receiving medical treatment? Or do we just ask the ones that “look” like illegal aliens.
That’s right, the insurance does not cover ilegal aliens but we are not doing a citizenship check at the emergency room door either. I guess we could just assume white folks are citizens and that would reduce the wait for everyone else.
Bolding mine. Your claim is false. There is no language in the bill saying that people will not receive medical care if they in the country illegally. No one has, to the best of my knowledge, made the claim that language like that is in the bill. HR 3200 is about medical insurance, not medical care (or treatment).
**Cheesesteak **and Whack-a-Mole put it fairly well in their replies and I thank you for clarifying your stance in your replies. However, I find your emphasis to be, still, completely misleading and inappropriate for someone who isn’t out for an agenda. The bill is about medical insurance, not a catch-all for reducing medical costs, stimulate the economy, and catch illegals.
You’re right, if we are doing something that will cost upwards of a trillion dollars, we should try to make it cost less. But immigration is an entirely different creature and has its own points and counterpoints. My problem with your stance is that you seem to want to lump the two together without any realization that doing both would be nearly impossible. In my mind, we should try to reform both, but do it seperately where each issue can get its own attention. I feel that Shodan, and possibly you, are trying to confute the two in order to subtlely promote this “fix” with the knowledge that it would not pass, would take months, possibly years, and erode support if the two were combined. Shodan, for certain, hasn’t shown any inclination he’s open to moderating his stance, and if I have improperly lumped you in together with him, then I apologize.
But the fact remains that immigration and health care should NOT be done on the same bill. I don’t give a shit whether or not immigration enforcement is in this bill. As far as I’m concerned, it shouldn’t be, for the reasons I’ve already stated. Health care is too important an issue to take a backseat to some piggyback pet issue of certain racist people in our country (not you guys, but some members in Congress, those tea baggers, etc.). It is not a good idea to mix the two. A single section that states that illegal immigrants are not to be given health care is all that is, and should be required in the bill. I am satisfied with how the issue is dealt with within the proposed law.
Now I see that people such as Shodan, and you, who continue to bring up this specious argument that illegals are being covered are not doing it out of genuine intellectual honesty, but a desire to cut off debate before it has begun. If you cared so much about illegal immigration, you should be talking about a seperate bill, not derailing another one. The only thing that should be acknowledged about this bill is that it would treat illegals no different from any other serious bill ever proposed.
Well I’ll be dipped, looks like Joe was closer to the truth after all…
Health negotiators focus on illegal immigrants
Sure is a lot of focus for something that according to Obama doesn’t exist :rolleyes:
More like when they stripped out the “end of life consulting” provision when it got conflated with “death panel”. I guess that meant the “death panels” were real too. Sigh. Grow a @($#* backbone, Dems.
“Pressed for a way to ensure that illegal immigrants can’t get access to government-funded insurance” does not mean the current bill extends insurance to illegal immigrants.
Well, I didn’t think quoting more than that would be necessary, but I guess I was wrong. For your benefit in case you’re link prohibited…
Sounds like they are attempting to remove some of the vagueness, which would be a good thing. If Joe’s outburst creates clear prevention language, good on him.
Are you seriosuly making the argument that because hospitals are not turning away illegal aliens and not getting reimbursed for some of that care and therefore increasing what it charges to all insurance companies (inlcuding the public option), that the public option is caring for illegal aliens? WTF?
Well then can you at least admit that the public option doesn’t provide MORE care for illegal aliens than they are getting now?
It’s not vague at all. I’ve already linked to the pertinent sections of HR 3200 about this. People in this country illegally cannot get insurance through the public option, and it will be up to the Health Commissioner to determine the avenues for determining people’s eligibility. It’s already in the bill, and it’s clear cut.
I don’t think anyone is arguing the language that is in the bill. No one is arguing that the language of the bill grants illegals any care. In fact, the language you cited shows that the opposite is the case. But the question is, without provisions in the bill preventing illegals from getting care through the back door, does that leave a means for illegals to get care.