EWIs, Legal Permanent Residents, and Healthcare
Posted on | November 5, 2009 | No Comments
An estimated 65% of Nevada’s 170,000 illegal immigrants are uninsured, and in Clark County one in five people who use expensive emergency room care lacks insurance. As the debate over healthcare reform continues, Congressional Republicans want to prevent illegal aliens from having any healthcare coverage, even if they pay for it in full themselves. Additionally, they want to limit access to coverage for legal immigrants like LPRs.
Two major elements of reform will be a requirement that everyone not currently covered must purchase health insurance and a set of income-based subsidies to help low- and middle-income families comply with this mandate. Lawmakers from both parties want to prevent undocumented immigrants from accessing these subsidies.
Republicans want to apply the same rules to these subsidies that have governed access to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare since 1996: illegal immigrants are barred from receiving the benefits and LPRs can only receive benefits if they have been residents for five years. On the other side are Democrats and Latino advocates, who want to avoid the five-year wait for insurance subsidies and also repeal the current five-year wait for the other programs.
The Republicans’ motivation here seems to be crassly political–in an effort to appeal to their base and show a “tough front” against illegal aliens, they are willing to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration. Yet this defies basic ideas about fairness and opportunity in America. Why should lawful permanent residents who work hard, have families, and pay taxes be denied health care? A sick employee can’t work. A sick parent can’t take care of a child. Yet again, the incoherence and sloganeering of the “Party of No” threatens to inject duplicity and undue obstacles into social policy.
Added to the usual tension between the “Don’t Reward Illegals” and “Immigrant Rights” camps is the fact that one goal of healthcare reform is universal coverage. This is not just a moral matter—it is also a very practical one. The insurance mandate avoids a problem known as adverse selection, in which only those who are likely to get sick seek health insurance, which makes insurance more expensive overall. Universal coverage is thus a way to control costs for all of us.
Moreover, when anyone–whether an undocumented immigrant or a U.S. citizen–forgoes preventive care and uses the emergency room as a clinic, we all pay more in uncompensated care, more expensive procedures, and the spread of disease and loss of productivity.
Our elected officials as a group–but especially Congressional Republicans–would do well to step down from their soapboxes and soberly contemplate the implications of their proposals for healthcare reform.
If you recently became an LPR and would be eligible for Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security, you may be able to access these benefits in only three years through Naturalization. For guidance on this and other immigration matters, please contact our Nevada offices for a free consultation.
Tags: Citizenship > Healthcare > Illegal Aliens > Immigrant Rights > Immigration Attorney > Immigration Lawyer > Medicaid > Naturalization > Nevada > Nevada-Las Vegas > Permanent Resident > Undocumented
Comments
Leave a Reply