Let’s talk about using a political stick to beat the crap out of people who need help.
Under a new federal policy, children born in the United States to illegal immigrants with low incomes will no longer be automatically entitled to health insurance through Medicaid, Bush administration officials said Thursday.
Illegal immigrants generally do not have access to Medicaid*, although there are some exceptions for emergencies, including labor and delivery. In the past, if a woman has received such treatment, her baby (who is a US citizen by virtue of being born here) has been eligible to receive benefits for its first year of life.
*Medicaid is administered by the states, but funded in part by the federal government. It’s frequently the one of the largest part of state budgets. However, the new policy comes down from a federal law which aims to get tougher on Medicaid fraud by illegal immigrants who wrongfully claim citizenship.
Under the new policy, parents must file an application for benefits on behalf of the child and provide a copy of the birth certificate to obtain subsequent treatment, which can take weeks. That is, if the parents aren’t too scared to talk for fear of endangering their own illegal status.
While the parents are filing the application, there can be delays which can be devastating to infants. In the first year of life, infants need immunizations and regular check-ups. The importance of preventative care for babies is huge, and it seem unconscionable to put up roadblocks to accessing care. Regardless of their parents’ status, these infants are citizens and deserve treatment accordingly.
Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law at George Washington University, said: “The new policy reflects a tortured reading of the new law and is contrary to the language of the 1984 statute, which Congress did not change. The whole purpose of the earlier law, passed with bipartisan support, was to make sure that a baby would not have a single day’s break in coverage from the date of birth through the first year of life.”
Culture of life, indeed.
[...] And again. Because what’s the fun of a rule if you don’t shatter it? This just makes me blind with rage. You don’t–you [...]
I mean, C’mon, we wouldn’t want HEALTHY BABIES! Healthy Babies….that’s SICK!!
You’d think that the people who oppose the “killing” of “babies” in utero would oppose denying the same babies basic care once they’re born.
That there are people who want American citizens to get sick and possibly die from stupid things like jaundice that can easily be fixed with minimal medical effort…it’s pretty disgusting.
One of the reasons it’s so embarrassing to be an American is that we have to put up with a mindset that regards medical care as a luxury.
Just this morning, I got a bill from my doctor for a series of medical tests. If I didn’t have health insurance, I would have owed $768. Since I do, I only owe $50.
BTW, the tests detected a precancerous condition. If I hadn’t had it taken care of, I would have developed colon cancer for certain. In what universe would it possibly make sense—financial sense, never mind moral sense— to let a condition like that go untreated until you’re at death’s door?
Bitter, the nearest I can tell is these people really want the world’s population drastically reduced (especially those “brown” ones), but can’t quite come out and face their own racism and hatred of humanity.
So they engage in a “passive/aggressive” approach that accomplishes the same thing but makes them feel they didn’t really hurt anyone. (limited healthcare, low wages, little/no retirement benefits, no limits on pollution, etc.)
Whatever’s behind the “I love clumps of cells but hate living people” attitude, it’s sick…
Polls show that there is a strong anti-illegal immigrant sentiment in the nation right now. I think that this will be a political winner for the Bush administration.
It’s not the first time such a thing happens in the US. In the 1930s, Roosevelt tried pushing for universal health care as one of his New Deal programs; it ended up losing because the Dixiecrats were mortified that his scheme would provide health care to black people.
Raging Moderate, polls also show most Americans would like to give law-abiding illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
Everyone propably knows this already, but this policy is going to result in more public money being spent on these children. It is illegal for hospitals to turn away patients on the basis of whether or not they can pay. So the children will get emergency care, but not routine care (check ups, immunizations, etc). But emergency care is more expensive as well as less efficient than getting routine health care. So more children will die, more money will be spent. Not a good result in any sense except that it punishes them for being born to the wrong parents, which is, I suppose, the intent.
It may also result in hospitals that serve indigent populations closing their emergency services. I’m too lazy to get links this morning but the deal is, if a hospital still has an ER, it’s typically hanging on by threads financially.
So when your dad has a heart attack he’ll have a longer ambulance ride, in exchange for beating up on immigrants one more way.
In what universe would it possibly make sense
The Planet of the Wealthy Insurance Companies.
If it isn’t heavily outweighed by a “healthy baby” sentiment, then I’ve just lost faith in humanity.
It isn’t.
But mythago, that isn’t true at all. If my insurance had to pay for me to be treated for colon cancer, they would have spent many times more money than they did for catching and treating the precancerous condition. And the same thing goes for just about any other medical condition, as Dianne pointed out.
Besides, I’d probably die, and dead men pay no premiums.
But on the Planet of Wealthy (and Shortsighted) Insurance Companies, they’ve solved that problem by providing substandard urgent/emergent care as well as virtually nonexistent preventive care.
I think that the rationale behind these measures is to keep people away until they’re not just deathly ill but dead.
I hate to be the one to defend insurance companies also, but the good ones will indeed work on preventing high-cost conditions from occurring in the first place. Of course not every company does this, and you have some freaking out because people go into the doctor for minor things that turn out not to be serious, which drives up their costs, etc.
But that’s besides the point, because the government should be stepping in to provide health insurance to anyone who needs it and can’t afford it. It’s just shocking that we punish people for being poor and sick in this day and age.