Obtaining a copy of one's birth certificate is not difficult. Really, it's not. Not if you're a legal resident, anyway.
My parents were both born at home, and they have valid birth certificates stating such.
It's not the elderly US citizens who will have problems with this. It's the elderly Mexican citizens who come to the US for free treatment who will.
I'd love to save the world, but there's not enough of my tax dollars to go around. Harris County Texas spent over 100 million dollars in 2005 to provide medical care to illegal immigrants. That's excluding Medicare/Medicaid or emergency room visits. It was 70 million in 2004, so let's assume it will be 130 million in 2006.
I don't get a free ride. Why should someone who is here illegally? If I were illegally in Mexico, they'd throw me in jail.
Another thing in your post that I take exception to.
You seem to assume that Medicaid is a right (". . .you can kiss your health care good bye."). It is not. Medicaid is not a substitute for getting the skills needed for a decent job so that you can pay for your own health expenses, like most working Americans have to do. Medicaid recipients should be working to better themselves, not expecting to continue to sponge off the rest of us. I wish there was a better way to phrase it, but that's the bottom line.
Elderly people and people with special problems are the exceptions. But otherwise healthy 20 year olds should not be relying upon Medicaid nor think that it's something they have a right to have.
Haloscan just ate my comment!
Surfer, 78% of Americans would disagree with your assertion that health care is not a right. We live in a country where 15.7% of us do not have health insurance. The percentage of Texans without health insurance is 24.8% That might be why Harris County had to spend $100 million on medical care for "illegal immigrants" (BTW where's your source for that information? Link please) I bet a that not all of the Texans without health insurance are illegal aliens but Americans. I'd bet some are in the middle class who are one health care crisis away from losing everything.
But noooo, it would just be easier for you to build the straw illegal immigrant and tear him down with your racist statement about how illegal immigrants are the reason why our health care system is screwed up.
Thanks Phinky!
I think I know where the source of information Surfer used to get those figures, it probably came from a recent article in the Houston Chronicle. The figures used by Surfer are similar, but I wonder how s/he knows that the 100 million spent excludes Medicare/Medicaid or emergency room visits. Not even the Chronicle made that claim. So unless Sufer works for the Hospital District or Commissioner Steve Radack knows something that wasn’t reported by the Chronicle, I have to agree with Phinky, provide the source of information. Otherwise, this another attempt to misstate the facts just to make things worse. Nice try, thanks for playing.
I enjoy how Houston’s GOP enjoys using their bread and butter argument when it comes to the hospital district and immigration. Yes the HCHD does have many problems, and the services used by the undocumented is not the root of their problem. (I will address this issue in a future post.)
But let's address the Chronicle's article that is being use to show how HCHD is bleeding the Harris County taxpayer dry because of these so-called "Border Jumpers." The HCHD is SUPPOSE to provide healthcare to more than 1.1 million people in Houston/Harris County ALONE to those who have no health insurance. This is out of a total population of 3.5 million in Houston/Harris County. The hospital district does this by operating 3 hospitals (Ben Taub General Hospital, Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, Quentin Mease Community Hospital); 12 community health centers; a dental center; seven school-based clinics; 13 homeless shelter clinics; and four mobile health units.
As I stated, this is just for residents of Houston/Harris County. In the ideal world this would be great, but in reality, it doesn’t. HCHD this does not, HCHD a "regional health care system” therefore services are provided to surrounding counties, which was not brought up by the Chronicle. Even Harris County's Judge Robert Eckels will attest to that fact. In fact, we will on his website, he states that the hospital district has become a "regional health care system for the adjacent counties, the southern United States, and other countries." Houston being a mini United Nations, other countries does not mean those countries South of the Border. Since Ben Taub hospital is consider one of the top hospitals in the nation for Trauma patients are brought in from surrounding regions. I also find it interesting that the Chronicle or the HCHD report didn’t talk about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita evacuees and the cost to the hospital district. Where they reimbursed for that too?
Should we spend local taxpayer money to secure Harris' County's borders so we deny any non-Houston/Harris County residents from surrounding counties from using our healthcare services because their own county has fewer services.
Texas leads the nation in the percentage of uninsured adults, and the percentage and number of uninsured children because of TX's stringent qualifications for eligibility for state and federal programs (Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program - SCHIP), I guess those elderly don't really have to worry about showing proof of citizenship.
You really should pause for thought before you post. Please, where in my posts did I say anything about anyone's race? Yet you scream "racist." Calm down a bit and maybe you'll learn something. Maybe if you're calm you'll be more effective in sharing your views with me, too. There's enough heat on these problems already.
First, combining this country's lack of overall heath care for citizens with the illegal immigration issue simply muddies the waters. Yes, our current heathcare system is a mess and needs to be fixed. The government has been grappling with that problem for years and there's no solution in sight yet.
For the existing system, what this new law does is ensures that taxpayer dollars are not being spent on citizens of another nation. You yourself have acknowledged that we aren't able to serve the citizenry now. So a prudent government takes steps to ensure that funds are being directed to citizens. When the amount being spent on illegal immigrants (or residents of other counties, Katrina evacuees, visitors, etc.) was not a significant portion of total expenses, they were not so concerned. If you are immigrants or children of recent immigrants, you know full well that Mexican citizens who could get care in Mexico choose to come to the US for care because it's free. Be honest.
(BTW, Houston and Harris County are continuing negotiations with both the State of Louisiana and the Federal Goverment regarding reimbursements for Katrina evacuees, not just for heath care, but for housing and education too.)
Do you really think that bankrupting the current system by providing care to non-citizens will somehow force the goverment to address the bigger issue of lack of an adequate heathcare system? It won't. It will simply force them to shut down what systems there are.
What amazes me about much of what I hear from the pro-illegal side of this issue is the assumption that there is enough money around to pay for this kind of stuff. Do the words deficit and federal debt have no meaning for you? Do you understand the federal budgeting process? THERE IS NO MONEY and no amount of demonstrations or walkouts or screams of racism or whatever will change that cold hard fact. Folks here who think things should be changed have been working to change them for a very long time.
As far as emergency room care being excluded, if you do some basic research on this you will discover that unpaid emergency room care is generally reimbured via the Medicare system or through block grants, both federal systems, not via the Harris County system. The website below has several papers on the topic, including this most recent one on emergency care in the US: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11629.html
I think it's good that this website is attempting to take part in the discussions on this divisive issue, but please, tone down the rhetoric and try to grasp a bit more of the bigger picture. Good luck. It's nice to see folks
Got truncated
...involved in the process.
Surfer | 06.23.06 - 8:57 am | #
It it precisely because we have been overrun with illegal aliens that such a requirement is necessary.
The whole world would come to the United States if it could. Are we going to let them all in? Or only the Mexicans who are able to walk across the border?
I'd rather bring in refugees from Darfur. They'd kiss the ground to be here, they wouldn't be demonstrating about their "economic power" and waving foreign flags. The only reason we have such a different immigration policy for Hispanics and everyone else is that there are already so many Hispanics that the politicians are lining up to kiss their behinds. Think that's a racist comment? I think the entire immigration "policy" is racist, favoring Hispanics over Haitians etc and the rest of the world.
John McCain now says if the immigration bill is not passed, that there will be riots in the streets. Better if we had had the riots 20 years ago instead of passing the first amnesty, we wouldn't have the immigration disaster we have now.
And if the illegal population presents this kind of threat to our peace and security, better to confront it now than in the future.
I'm enjoying your blog! Gotta ways to catch up. Keep it up!
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