Senate Healthcare Bill has giant loopholes for illegal aliens
Thurday, November 19, 2009
By Carl Braun
Examiner.com
Senator Harry Reid announces his Healthcare Bill
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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H.R. 3590. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Written by a bunch of failed lawyers turned politicians, the Senate Healthcare Bill makes obfuscation an art form as it provides giant loopholes for benefits for illegal aliens.
The new legislation, constructed by Harry Reid and company certainly one-ups the Pelosi team when it comes to legal mumbo jumbo (a technical term) and vague attempts at appearing tough on illegal immigration.
Granting broad authority of interpretation to the Directors of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and the Treasury, the 2,074-page document has almost zero specificity regarding illegal aliens and healthcare benefits. It instead takes an aggregate of 20 pages, 753 lines and 5,000 words to ultimately come to the conclusion that any appeals, rules, changes, adjustments, considerations and interpretations lie at the behest of the aforementioned Directors. In other words: a free-for-all.
Take for example this verbiage on page 271 which is the strongest language this writer could find limiting benefits for non-citizens.
1 (2) CITIZENSHIP OR IMMIGRATION STATUS.—
2 The following information shall be provided with re-
3 spect to every enrollee:
4 (A) In the case of an enrollee whose eligi-
5 bility is based on an attestation of citizenship of
6 the enrollee, the enrollee’s social security num-
7 ber.
8 (B) In the case of an individual whose eli-
9 gibility is based on an attestation of the enroll-
10 ee’s immigration status, the enrollee’s social se-
11 curity number (if applicable) and such identi-
12 fying information with respect to the enrollee’s
13 immigration status as the Secretary, after con-
14 sultation with the Secretary of Homeland Secu-
15 rity, determines appropriate.
In other words if you attest you are a citizen and you cannot provide a social security number, ANY social security number as there are no provisions for verification, then the rules will be defined by the respective Department Secretaries whom have all but declared an amnesty for illegal aliens already. NO E-Verify. NO other means of proving you are who you say you are. Just cough up Bob Smith’s SSN or just SAY you are Bob and you’re golden (sorry Bob).
How about we take all that language and replace it with these 20 words: Anyone illegally in the United States is not entitled to healthcare benefits in any form as part of this legislation.
We can manage to run an entire country for over 200 years with a document containing 4,608 words and filling 4 pages of parchment. Yet this Congress presents a bill running 2,000 plus pages to deal with one subject, Healthcare, and even then cannot get it right.
The vast majority of Americans do not want government run healthcare nor do they want benefits for people who aren’t supposed to be here in the first place. Congress and the President hear that message but are subservient to special interests. They will get OUR message in November of 2010 provided the next bill coming out of Congress doesn’t deal with VOTING rights for illegal aliens. Oh yeah. Thats right. The Administration already has that on the docket. Some call it Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Carl Braun is an analyst for the Homeland Security Policy Institute Group and he’s logged 5,000-plus hours on the border. He has written several books including his most recent on Border Insecurity, “Above All Else”
. Contact Carl at Carl.Braun@BPAUX.org.
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