ObamaCare could blow up immigration reform
Under current law, the federal government is expected to spend $254 billion, insuring 36 million through Obamacare in 2022. Adding 8 million newly eligible individuals to the mix would boost that number by $57 billion in that year alone, assuming the per capita cost remains constant. That could translate to hundreds of billions of dollars in increased costs over the course of a decade.
Anticipating this, framers of the bipartisan compromise stipulate that “current restrictions preventing nonimmigrants from accessing federal public benefits will also apply to lawful probationary immigrants.” “Probationary status” is what would be given to qualifying illegal immigrants when the plan is approved. A White House fact sheet on President Obama’s proposal echoes this: “Consistent with current law, people with provisional legal status will not be eligible for welfare or other federal benefits, including subsidies or tax credits under the new health care law.”
But it’s unclear that the law as currently written would actually prevent newly legalized immigrants from accessing such benefits. In outlining the requirements for the exchanges, for instance, the legislative text of Obamacare references “alien(s) lawfully present in the United States” as being eligible.
Blowback
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Nah, it’ll be the other way around, but that’s ok.
They’ll simply blow more taxpayer money to prop it up .
catmman on January 31, 2013 at 3:07 PM
Like Obama gives a rat’s ass. He’ll have been out of office for 5 years by the time 2022 rolls around. Shoot, the 45th President may not even be in office by then. A bunch of Congressmen and Senators could be retired or dead. They don’t care.
Doughboy on January 31, 2013 at 3:10 PM
“Blow up”?
He’ll need a skeet shotgun for that!
Shy Guy on January 31, 2013 at 3:12 PM
Until a judge says otherwise.
El_Terrible on January 31, 2013 at 3:13 PM
Why do I get the sinking feeling that these clowns will to craft this clusterf*ck ostensibly to exclude these probabionary illegal immigrants only to have the entire left legal community–inevitably led by Obama–bring all its resources to be to overturn the exclusion on some constitutional grounds?
BuckeyeSam on January 31, 2013 at 3:13 PM
Illegals are no longer sent back.
Nappi rewards them with Obamacare welcome wagons, er packages.
Schadenfreude on January 31, 2013 at 3:14 PM
Give me your healthcare-deprived
Your huddled masses yearning to mooch
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the Obamacare-less
Tempest-tossed to me
I offer my looting the golden door!
Schadenfreude on January 31, 2013 at 3:20 PM
De-facto means that when illegals need emergency care, they get treated anyway. We’re already paying for it.
John the Libertarian on January 31, 2013 at 3:28 PM
Remind me again how much money the “Afordable Health Care Act” was gonna save us?
apostic on January 31, 2013 at 3:30 PM
I hate Liberals. Really.
Charlemagne on January 31, 2013 at 3:32 PM
Immigration plus Obamacare will blow up the Treasury.
But that’s a feature, not a bug. Cloward-Piven on steroids.
petefrt on January 31, 2013 at 3:35 PM
wake up guys. illegals are already getting free medical here. obamacare will only legitimize it.
and the beauty of it is. their health care will be exactly the same as yours.
the idiots up washington get the gold plated plans. us plebes will be getting mexi-care.
renalin on January 31, 2013 at 4:04 PM
They won’t need to use constitutional grounds. The Obamacare statutory language clearly, unambiguously states that “alien(s) lawfully present in the U.S.” are eligible.
It won’t matter if they call the illegals’ new legal status “probationary” or “potato” — the only legally relevant point is that they will be “lawfully present in the U.S.,” and thus eligible to participate in the exchanges. And since the vast majority of illegal aliens are low-skilled and poorly-educated, they’ll be needing all those juicy taxpayer-funded subsidies in order to participate.
But hey, what’s a few hundred billion more dollars’ worth of “free” benefits for illegal aliens going to matter now? To quote Hillary Clinton: At this point, what difference does it make?
A lot of them use Medicaid (many use it illegally, but thanks to Obama, they do so knowing they’ll never be prosecuted), and others use our E.R.’s as their primary-care physicians. But Obamacare provides new, and expensive “free” coverages for things people can’t typically get in the E.R. — such as “free” yearly mammograms and colonoscopies. So Obamacare will do more than legitimize the “free” medical care illegals are already receiving here at our considerable expense: it will also expand it, at a cost to us of many billions of dollars every year.
AZCoyote on January 31, 2013 at 4:50 PM