Well, maybe it will be more than one fact, and betimes it might be less. I’ll be interested to see how long I can keep the series up.
Let’s begin with the fact (or fiction) that made Rep. Joe Wilson (R[ude]–S.C.) a national figure overnight. Who was lying about whether the reformed health care system would provide benefits to illegal aliens? The White House waited till Friday afternoon (its standard time for releasing news it would rather no one hear) to announce that it would support requiring applicants for subsidized insurance to present proof of citizenship or legal residency.
Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee had unanimously voted against verification requirements, without which it meant nothing to say that benefits were available only to persons legally present in the United States. That’s why Rep. Wilson was moved to call the President’s blanket statement that illegals would be excluded a “lie”. The White House now agrees, though it presumably would prefer “inexactitude” to “lie”. The congressman’s outburst of truth speaking to power was impolite, but Mr. Obama is himself a one-time rabble rouser community organizer, and he was not famous for obeying Miss Manners’ precepts.
That leaves a question that hasn’t gotten much attention. Should illegals be excluded? Philip Terzian, a conservative who, like me, doesn’t support immigration restrictionism puts forward an argument for covering them:
Rep. Joseph Wilson of South Carolina shouted ‘You lie!’ from the floor when President Obama told Congress that his health care ‘reform’ proposals would not insure illegal aliens. As it happens, it was Joseph Wilson, and not Barack Obama who spoke the truth in that exchange, and I leave it to others to sort out the etiquette of presidential harangues to joint sessions of Congress.
But what struck me was the substance of Obama’s assertion: What sort of humane national health-insurance program would pointedly exclude illegal aliens? There is no national debate, so far as I know, about the fact that we offer free, competent, taxpayer-subsidized health care to convicted felons, pedophiles, rapists, and murderers of the cruelest variety – that is to say, to the millions of Americans currently in prison – but a Democratic president is eager to deny health care to people who live here peaceably, pay taxes, and make a vital contribution to the American economy? Barack Obama would subsidize health care for Charles Manson, but not the man who fills your potholes or the woman who scrubs your toilet.
The flaw in this analogy is that prisoners have, as part of their punishment, been deprived of the means of making money to pay for goods like health care. (If they do happen upon sources of income, most states will levy upon it to reimburse the costs of incarceration, including medical care.) Illegal aliens have entered the U.S. voluntarily in the hope of economic betterment. One of the factors that they should have to weigh is whether the income they gain by working unlawfully will suffice to cover their expenses, one which is the cost of medical treatment. That doesn’t strike me as an unfair trade-off. I agree with Mr. Terzian that it would be better to establish a rational guest worker program, so that willing workers could enter the country freely, but that’s a separate debate.
The drawback to letting anybody who can slip across the border take advantage of government-subsidized health benefits has been summed up by Mark Steyn:
The minute a first-world country has “free” health care, it becomes the provider of choice to anyone who can get there, particularly for any long-term ailments requiring state-of-the-art medications. In 2004, Britain’s Health Protection Agency revealed that 44 percent of HIV patients being treated by the National Health Service were not residents of the United Kingdom at all, but from southern Africa. In essence, a huge number of AIDS patients in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland, and Lesotho have decided to outsource their health-care needs to British taxpayers. Similar trends will manifest themselves here in nothing flat.
It seems, then, that the President agrees with Joe Wilson on substance – health care reform shouldn’t be an open-ended foreign aid program – and ought to be grateful for the warning against legislative tomfoolery. Well and good, but let’s keep in mind that there’s no guarantee that Mr. Obama will get his way with his fellow Democrats. Remember how he was going to rein in earmarks and how much attention the Reid-Pelosi cabal paid to that effort? I’d be willing to bet a moderate chunk of my life savings that verification falls into a black hole before the bill is ready to be signed into law. Will a Joe Wilson be around to alert the President then?
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