The supposed lie about illegals getting insurance is that the proposals don’t specifically bar people who lie from making more lies and getting service.  In other words, if hospitals won’t become immigration agencies, they’ll be just like the sanctuary movement.  Yes, it is absurd to suggest that no one who doesn’t have a right to medical care won’t lie and get some.  But the assertion that the bills are an attempt to cover illegal immigrants either overtly or covertly is a bald-faced lie.

If the 18 or 30 or 47 million people who don’t have healthcare can’t get it because some illegals might glom on and steal some, I still can’t see why that’s worth denying American citizens something so important.  Then again, I’m not a Republican.

Well come on, Amanda, clearly kicking their illegal asses back into the gutter is what Jesus would want.

Alive?  Well, dead from the neck up, perhaps.  His brain stem toddles merrily along I guess.

As a general reaction I just can’t shake what a boorish, dangerous, uncouth and unfeeling place America has become.  If a Republican goal is to induce disgust to the point on non-engagement they’re doing a pretty good job, even I don’t want to hear another god damn word about healthcare, it’s all so disgusting and endless.

Yet Republicans insist on this behavior even after they’ve had the shit beat out of them electorally.  Their regression is even overtaking self-survival, and that strikes me as extremely dangerous.

I wonder how many Republicans would personally forgo health care in order to not have to share with the “undeserving”.  They should put their money—-and health—-where their mouths are.

The whole “illegals getting care, ZOMG!” crap has been around since the Contract On America of ‘94. Only one republican I can think of took two seconds to rub a few braincells together and realize that if you deny illegal immigrants— you know, the ones swarming to America from developing or 3rd-world countries—health care, you’ll have a public health crisis on your hands when parents are too afraid of getting deported to bring their kids in for vaccinations, or to get treatment when some nasty virus is on the move.  Of course, he was a mayor of a large city and so the reality of the situation was a little more self-evident to him.

But consider the slaughterhouses of the midwest, which are staffed almost entirely by illegal immigrants and which supply this country with the vast majority of its meat. Do we really want a bunch of sick dudes and chicks handling the meat that will eventually be cooked and eaten by the majority of us?

It may be that if we can reduce costs in a sensible way, that the undocumented workers could go out and pay for immunizations/emergent care out-of-pocket and not “burden” the taxpayers with their illnesses. But if you’re really invested in public health, you want them to be able to go to doctors.

Personally, I don’t want to live under the regime wingnuts propose, where you have to prove your citizenship before, say, they stop you from bleeding to death.  That strikes me as an extra step that could prove fatal, especially if I don’t happen to have my passport on me.  Since many wingnuts don’t travel abroad and don’t have passports, they should be extra concerned about a law that requires that you provide proof of citizenship before you have potentially fatal health care concerns addressed in E.R.

One minute, you’re thinking, “God, it’s not right that a hard-working person who does everything right should be bankrupted and left out to die because their disease wasn’t profitable for some insurance company,” and the next minute, you turn into a vagina.

Please allow me the honor of being the one to present you with a nice, shiny new Internet.

Seconding Mighty Ponytailgirl.

This is an actual argument in support of Joe Wilson that I actually saw posted on Facebook:

i don’t doubt that the current health care plan forbids access to illegal immigrants. but i also have little doubt that in time, it will, in some fashion. i imagine that fed Wilson’s frustration: technically what obama’s saying is true, at that static moment in time, but no govt program ever shrinks, it just expands, and little pieces of government programs are always modified. some plaintiff’s atty (of which i am one) will find some way to bootstrap illegals into coverage. all it takes is one good “unjust discrimination” argument for the whole “no access for illegals” to unravel. first question: define “illegal immigrant”.

we have created numerous different classes of citizenship over the past few decades. illegals are slowly becoming one of them.

for wilson i imagine it’s a bit like reading a brief from opposing counsel you just know is filled with half-truths and falsehoods—but there you get the chance to respond in the same forum. only obama gets prime-time center stage access

To which a friend of mine responded:

He called our president “Liar,” twice, during a presidential address to Congress, because some defense lawyer, at some distant point in the future, will probably argue that illegals deserve protection?

Wilson and all the other republicans who harp on this point are hateful scum who should be tarred and feathered.

And it’s not clear how much undocumented workers actually impose in costs on the system because—ignoring for the moment the felonious employers who pay them in cash to evade taxes—they’re already paying into a bunch of safety-net systems that they can never benefit from. If they have a fake social security card, they’re paying FICA and Medicare, but will never be able to draw on those. They’re paying sales taxes, having federal income tax withheld from their paychecks that they will never get to file returns to claim refunds for. Their employers are paying unemployment insurance on them, but they’ll never collect from that, and so forth. If you wanted to even things out, you’d arrange for some kind of transfer among social programs…

Hey, here’s an idea for the people who are so desperately worried about the number of illegal workers in this country:  why not throw a few employers in jail?  I guarantee you that if, say, a couple of vice presidents at Tyson got 5-to-10 in federal prison for immigration violations, the number of jobs available for illegal workers would go down sharply and they would return to their home countries.

Oh, wait, I forgot—jobs just magically appear the minute an illegal worker arrives in this country and the employers who hire these people have no idea where the job came from or that the people they’re hiring don’t have permission to work here, even when they hire hundreds of people without documentation.  And, sadly, juries actually believe them, even after the same company is charged with the same actions multiple times.

Gee, it’s almost as though we don’t actually want to stop illegal workers from arriving and only want to make sure they are sufficiently cowed to not complain about any treatment they receive while they’re here, isn’t it?

But consider the slaughterhouses of the midwest, which are staffed almost entirely by illegal immigrants and which supply this country with the vast majority of its meat. Do we really want a bunch of sick dudes and chicks handling the meat that will eventually be cooked and eaten by the majority of us?

Hey Ponygirl, I know you were referring in general to the megaslaughterhouses of the Big Ag players, but to clarify, the small state inspected abbatoirs and processors are generally in rural towns and employ locals and often family of the inter-generational owners.

And yep, as a public safety measure I’d sure want access to healthcare for illegal immigrants- and extend your concerns to the farm workers and migrants who pick veggies and feed livestock.  Just like I’d want them to get public education for the self-interested reason that if they’re literate they’re less likely to inadvertently put toxins on my tomatoes or feed substances to livestock the day before slaughter, even if I were I a KKK ReThuglican type who couldn’t bring myself to see them as people deserving of basic human rights- which, as one of us silly progressive liberal types, I can.

I used to live in Ellensburg, WA and it was funny that the INS only ever raided the big alfalfa producing ranches on the last day of taking in the harvest, which had the added benefit of the ranches not “being able to pay someone who was in custody.” 

And guess to which party the majority of those ranch owners belong to. 

These assholes really do lack even basic human empathy, don’t they?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamacare-wont-cover-illegal-immigrants—55021087.html

“[T]the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says this about H.R. 3200, the Obamacare bill approved just before the recess by the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA:
“Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.”

CRS also notes that the bill has no provision for requiring those seeking coverage or services to provide proof of citizenship. So, absent some major amendments to the legislation and a credible, concrete enforcement effort in action, looks like the myth on this issue is the one being spread by Obama, Reid, Pelosi, et. al. “

Obviously, if there’s no money to check if people are eligible for services, then the fact that they’re not technically eligible is irrelevant.  It’s a bit like leaving a stack of hundred dollar bills out and saying, “You may only take one.”  If nobody is doing any checking, then they’re all going to vanish when the first unscrupulous person shows up.

phylosopher—and what % of meat consumed in the US is processed by local family slaughterhouses.

Stop nitpicking. It’s completely avoiding the point. The locavores here know who they are and know I’m not talking about them.

Mighty Ponygirl, your comments sent my mind down the slippery slope of revenge. Because I didn’t stop to think about sick illegal immigrants poisoning the meat we eat; my brain went straight to, “Wow! What if they caused a flu epidemic in all of the small towns where they work and sent a few thousand wingnut birthers to the hospital? Then the wingnut birthers insurance companies refused to pay for their care?!” Then I smiled like the Grinch when he was plotting to steal the Who’s Christmas.

Somebody save me. The birthers are making me evil.

Ooh, goody. The troll doesn’t notice that what it’s describing is the status quo.

It’s a bit like leaving a stack of hundred dollar bills out and saying, “You may only take one.” If nobody is doing any checking, then they’re all going to vanish when the first unscrupulous person shows up.

I don’t follow… are you saying that the first immoral illegal immigrant who shows up is going to steal all the country’s appendectomies for hirself? Or are you saying that’s a stupid concern to have?

19, what I’m saying is that if there’s a prohibition on who may use a service, but no mechanism to enforce that prohibition, it is little better than no prohibition at all.  Obviously, it would be impossible for any one person to drain all the healthcare resources.  However, there are approximately ten million illegal immigrants in the United States.  If they are theoretically prohibited from accessing a service, but there’s no mechanism to in fact keep them out, then that’s quite the deadweight loss on the system.  This is similar but greater in scope to the problem of young illegal immigrants draining education resources.

Lol @ DC Fem! Nah, I think this is just the last moments before the culmination of a 200-year-old plot by the Mexican government as their secret agents slowly infiltrate the US and poise to strike us all down with the flu—that’ll teach us to steal Texas/etc! (As if just having Texas wasn’t enough of a lesson. ;p Sorry, Amanda.)

Curse those illegals for stealing all our precious appendectomies!

If they are theoretically prohibited from accessing a service, but there’s no mechanism to in fact keep them out, then that’s quite the deadweight loss on the system.

I think this was partly addressed by Paul @ #11 though. And I’m dubious that trying to enforce withholding medical care would be any cheaper than just giving people medical care and not worrying about it, yanno? ‘Sides, wouldn’t healthcare enforcement like that just be another huge, wasteful, ineffective government program that the Republicans should hate (but totally won’t ‘cause it targets brown people?)

Allen, if you want to bleed to death in E.R. while they run a background check on you, have at it. But it shouldn’t be the law.

Wingnuts: people who want no background check on would-be shooters, but want one for their victims.

I have to admit, conservatism is looking more and more like it’s just about maximizing human suffering.

Allen, considering the corporate profits derived from all those 10 million “illegals,” I think calling them dead weight is a little misleading. As somebody else mentioned, many of them have fake social insurance cards, so they’re paying into the system as it is. Again, not really dead weight. Probably if you want some kind of public option, there will be a health card/number involved there, which people will pay into (like we do up here in Canada). Again, if you fake one of those, it may very well end up being deducted from your paycheque. That’s how it (sometimes) works up here in Canada; I don’t know specifically how it would be implimented down there. If that’s how it’s done, they’re still not dead weight because they’re already paying into the system that way.

If they are theoretically prohibited from accessing a service, but there’s no mechanism to in fact keep them out, then that’s quite the deadweight loss on the system.

That’s not what deadweight loss means!

“Deadweight loss” is such a sexy term to sling around, isn’t it?  Makes you sound so smart and edumacated.  Megan McArdle loves it.

“We can’t afford to train our employees!  They’ll just take their knowledge and work somewhere else!”

...much better to keep them working for you and stupid…

“We can’t afford to make those people healthy!  They’ll just take their health and move back to Mexico!”

...much better to keep them here and sick…

I think supporters of citizenship tests at ER should volunteer for a pilot program to see how that would work.  The hitch?  They have to have to clear the bar the birthers created for Obama.  So, in order to get emergency treatment, you need to provide a long form birth certificate (even if your state didn’t issue them), two witnesses to your birth, and submit to a month long examination of the kerning of your birth certificate.  After all that, you’ll be denied anyway, because you cannot provided proof that you weren’t motivated to fake all the evidence.

What makes the “no ID” claim trolling is that this is the way things already are. All the laws that require hospitals and so forth to provide care already fail to have an requirement that people prove citizenship. So unless you’re willing to scrap those laws and throw out all the republicans who voted for them, you’re about as credible as the loons screaming “keep your government hands off my medicare!”

And just by the way, the whole “illegal immigrant children” thing is in large part also a vile fabrication. Anyone born in the US (with the exception of children born to foreign diplomats and similar personnel) is a US citizen, and attempting to deny them an education or other rights of a citizen can be a federal crime. There is in fact an ongoing scandal about this because thousands of minors who are US citizens are being held in immigration jails under the guise of “not breaking up families”.

Amanda—There’s no inconsistency between providing emergency treatment and then, if it turns out they’re not here legally, referring them to BCIS for deportation. 

23—Running a quick check in a system is going to be less expensive than providing chemo.  And checking before somebody is eligible for government services is an odd definition of a government program.  There’s no inconsistency in saying we shouldn’t have program x, but if we do have program x, it should be screened to keep out criminals.

25—I’d love to see the numbers on that.  Regardless, I’m not sure “the system comes out ahead on criminal behavior” is a good excuse to ignore criminal behavior.

Re: “Deadweight loss”: Call it what you will, but a simple screening mechanism to prevent healthcare from going to people who are, under the plan, not entitled to it would almost certainly pay for itself.

I’m dubious that trying to enforce withholding medical care would be any cheaper than just giving people medical care and not worrying about it, yanno?

But if you let those wily, slippery brown people milk us for healthcare, then ... uh ... something. I’m not exactly sure what but I’m guessing it’s along the lines of THE WILY SLIPPERY BROWN PEOPLE WIN!1!

You can’t talk sense to them.  Unless we want to rollback laws that make it illegal for Emergency rooms to not treat a person, then we are all going to continue to pay for “illegals” anyway.  There’s just no way around that.  Now, I do realize that many on the right, certainly on the teabag right, would absolutley vote to do just that!  (allow emergency rooms to deny life-saving care).  But it’s not going to happen, so here we are paying for the medical costs of “illegals”.

Now, what if we did insure them and get them to pay into the system too?  That would be an additional revenue stream directly into health care and so they would no longer be a drain, but rather, jsut another group paying in and taking out.  Further, and probably most importantly, they would be far more likely to get preventive care.  To get help before the situation turns into an emergency.  It doesn’t take a leftist to see that this would drastically lower costs, does it?

So we have a shitbag right here.

Sorry Allen, in my country you aren’t going to allow people to die in an emergency room because they’re not citizens.  And if you don’t like that then I suggest you get the fuck out.

If nobody is doing any checking, then they’re all going to vanish when the first unscrupulous person shows up.

Are all illegal immigrants “unscrupulous?”  What about unscrupulous American citizens, for example rich people who can afford to pay for their own health care but free ride on an insurance plan anyway?  Should people be required to present a current pay stub and a notarized statement of financial net worth from a licensed CPA as well as a certified long-form copy of their birth certificate before being allowed in the door of the hospital when they have a heart attack or their appendix bursts?  If you don’t do that, how do you know they aren’t gaming the system and consuming services they aren’t legally entitled to?

Do you know what “unscrupulous” means?

conservatism is looking more and more like it’s just about maximizing human suffering

Of course it is, because not suffering (or at least suffering somewhat less than others) is the only indisputable proof of one’s superior worth.  That’s just how they’re wired.

Re #31 - Allen, your idea of deporting ER patients is brilliant!  This will force illegal immigrants to carefully assess just how badly they are bleeding before deciding whether emergency medical care is worth deportation.  With any luck, quite a few will miscalculate and bleed to death, thus reducing the number of illegal immigrants AND keeping them out of our hospitals.  Fantastic!

There’s no inconsistency between providing emergency treatment and then, if it turns out they’re not here legally, referring them to BCIS for deportation.

But you don’t stop there, do you?  You don’t want the check just for emergency care; you want it for ALL care.  The fact that such a policy would lead to all the bad outcomes already mentioned due to avoiding early treatment (especially for communicable diseases!) bothers you not one whit.  So what if we help the spread of swine flu among our citizenry, at least those illegal immigrant criminals aren’t getting treatment on MY dollar!

Brilliant!

So, in order to get emergency treatment, you need to provide a long form birth certificate (even if your state didn’t issue them), two witnesses to your birth, and submit to a month long examination of the kerning of your birth certificate

Amanda, don’t forget all men will need to lower their drawers to show a panel of wingnuts they’ve been properly circumcised. You know, Penis Panels!

The thing about “illegals” comes back to the conservative world view of cutting of your nose to spite your face.  They’d rather let thousands of “deserving” Americans die unnecessarily and for all Americans to pay extra in health care costs rather than let on single person get something that they allegedly don’t deserve.  I think it’s a silly trade-off, but that’s because I actually care about people, especially Americans.  Leaving out illegal immigrants hurts everyone.  Contagious diseases don’t care about citizenship status.  If more people remain untreated for diseases, that increases everyone else’s chances of catching that disease, including citizens and even rich politicians.  Of course, none of this is even relevant since the proposed health care reform won’t cover illegal immigrants anyway.

Allen, you really are a miserable human being, aren’t you?  I’ve seen cruelty, but reading your “suggestions” gives me that shiver that you get when you have to question whether someone’s utter disdain for other human beings means they’re actually a psychopath.

You can’t have penis panels.  Every closet case in the Republican party will be fighting to get on it.  It will be a real cockfight so to speak, and not everyone is guaranteed to come out alive.

Running a quick check in a system is going to be less expensive than providing chemo.

Not so fast.  If the check costs $50, and chemo costs $10,000, you only have to run 200 checks before you pass the break-even point.  You’re assuming the check would be practically free to run, and that’s not a given.

You want to check all 250 million people in the country who go to the hospital, to catch those of the 10 million that are here illegally who might want to consume health care services.  You want to spend taxpayer money to look for needles in a haystack, in other words.

Brilliant!  I can’t imagine why you guys can’t get elected.

conservatism is looking more and more like it’s just about maximizing human suffering

Actually, it’s about maximizing the suffering of the people who “deserve” to suffer, even if that means increasing suffering for those who don’t “deserve” it.

I’m sure I’ve explained this before, but the difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives prioritize punishing people they deem bad, and liberals prioritizing helping people who need it.  I’ve done a lot of volunteer work in soup kitchens, and when I talk about it, someone inevitably asks “Don’t you think that some of the people who go there don’t really need it and are taking advantage of you?” in an attempt to convince me that I shouldn’t do it.  Honestly, I think it’s just silly to deny food to 99 needy people because 1 person doesn’t really need it, but some people think the other way around.  I really think that a lot of our differences boil down to this attitude.

33/34: Again, stabilize and deport in the case of illegals.  I said nothing about depriving emergency care.

35: Any reasonable definition of unscrupulous would include availing one self of benefits one is not entitled to.  By definition, illegal immigrants do this simply by being here.  Barring a bizarre situation where they somehow ended up being here by accident and haven’t had a chance to get to BCIS and inform them of the situation yes, an illegal immigrant is by definition unscrupulous. 

37: By that logic, anybody coming in to the ER should be immune from law enforcement.  If somebody comes in with three bullet wounds, and it’s reported that somebody fleeing the scene of a double murder was shot three times, then the ER should say nothing.  Otherwise, we would force criminals to decide between getting away with their crime and getting medical treatment.  That makes no sense whatsoever.

38:  Same as 37. 

40: Not so.  If emergency treatment was provided but longer term treatment required verification, then nobody would die.  People in the process of an ongoing criminal act, namely immigration violation, would merely be caught at greater rates.

Amanda/41: Again, same as 37.  I’m astonished you view anybody who needs medical care as above the law.  If I rob a bank, should I fake the sniffles so I can get away with it? Let me know.

*shudder*

Look, Allen, I consider you to be dead weight, a worthless person whose obvious lack of a human conscience means that you contribute nothing to society.  But I don’t think that you should be punished for seeking necessary medical care. 

It would be interesting to run fMRI scans on the heads of people like Allen when they write these disturbing screeds, see if they really do have a total shutdown of empathy, or only when they’re considering people who aren’t white.

Those liberals with their appeals to basic decency are trying to make you look weak.  One minute, you’re thinking, “God, it’s not right that a hard-working person who does everything right should be bankrupted and left out to die because their disease wasn’t profitable for some insurance company,” and the next minute, you turn into a vagina.

And, let me tell ya, having to using your labia makes it difficult to type.

You perhaps have an overly optimistic view of human nature.  People do have decency and empathy, they also have fear and selfishness.  Appealling to these last two qualities is, and always has been, a winning strategy for power-mongers.  I don’t care how decent and nice the average person is, if you can whip up their fear, and especially if you can figure out how to let them feal righteous about it, you can get them to go along with all sorts of atrocities.

Squawking about those dirty diseased illegals is just one example.

That’s why liberals have a problem - we’re appealling to the mammal part of the brain, but the lizard part evolved first.

If they are theoretically prohibited from accessing a service, but there’s no mechanism to in fact keep them out, then that’s quite the deadweight loss on the system.  This is similar but greater in scope to the problem of young illegal immigrants draining education resources.

Uh-huh.  Yup - young, educated people with a desire to work are certainly the last thing a country needs.

I’m not even trying to be funny.  Allen’s basic lack of human decency is disturbing the fuck out of me.

Amanda, I never proposed punishing people for seeking medical care.  I merely seek enforcement of immigration law.  And if “basic lack of human decency” encompasses “illegal immigrants shouldn’t get free non-emergency healthcare at taxpayer expense,” then you’re accusing the vast majority of Americans of lacking basic human decency, including President Obama.

If emergency treatment was provided but longer term treatment required verification, then nobody would die.

Wow, you’re wrong on so many levels.  Emergency treatment is not as effect as prevention and non-emergency treatment.  For example, if I get strep throat and treat it with antibiotics right away, I have an excellent prognosis.  If I don’t get antibiotics, I could get scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, or other complications.  Even if I go to an emergency room with these complications, my chances of survival are much lower than if I had been treated with antibiotics in the first place.  Another example is any vaccine-preventable illness.  If I get vaccinated for polio, my only risk is the minuscule risk of an allergic reaction to the vaccine.  If I wait until I actually get polio to go to an emergency room, then I could easily die from it.

If you’re so worried about catching criminals, then what we should do is place radar guns outside of hospitals.  If anyone was speeding to get there, they should be treated and then fined or have their license removed.  After all, they committed a crime and that’s the most important thing.  Finding criminals is a great use for hospital emergency rooms.  We know that it’s crime that you genuinely care about, and you’re not arguing in bad faith because of some other reason, so you must love this idea too.  Oh wait, we should also run each patients name through a registry of all open arrest warrants!  Now there’s a fantastic idea.  And of course people might use fake IDs, so we’ll require birth certificates.  Hopefully people can remember to bring all their proof that they’re not evading an arrest warrant while they’re hobbling to the hospital on that broken leg.

You can’t have penis panels.  Every closet case in the Republican party will be fighting to get on it.  It will be a real cockfight so to speak, and not everyone is guaranteed to come out alive.

In the event of dispute, you’re going to have to find experts on the differences between American and Hispanic penises.  (*).  And I’m not sure the evidence will stand up in court.

.

.

.

.

(*) You’d be amazed at the number of moderately amusing lines that could have been put here, all of which would have got me stoned.

Catgirl, every state I’m aware of has an exception to the speeding (and most other traffic) laws for emergencies.

As for checking open warrants, that would also be a good idea.  Do you really want a murderer or child molester on the run to get treated and then get away because nobody bothered to run his name through a computer?  And ID can be validated in a normal way; surely hospitals already have protocols for that so they know who to bill, which old records to pull, can tell family where patients are, etc.

As for your first paragraph, your argument amounts to turning a blind eye to criminal activity because those engaging in criminal activity might maybe be at an enhanced health risk.  That’s not sound.  It’s a bit like saying the police shouldn’t chase bank robbers because the stress of the chase might cause the robbers to have a heart attack.

Oh Allen, also remember that in our country, people are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.  It is not each person’s duty to prove that they aren’t committing a crime.  You have it backwards.

You tell ‘em, Allen. Serves those Mexies right for not having the foresight to be born on the right side of the border. Criminals! The lot of them!

Catgirl, that’s why I said “refer them to BCIS.”  It would then be up to the BCIS and normal procedures to determine if they are in fact here illegally.  Your argument seems to be that the presumption of innocence prevents law enforcement investigation.

Kristin, the immigration laws apply equally regardless of where you are born outside the United States.  Mexico, to run with the example you chose, also has immigration law that it enforces, and it does so quite a bit more harshly than the US does.  Obviously, the criminal act is the invasion over the border.

Allen, you don’t seem to get that requiring hospitals to report illegal immigrants means that ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WILL NOT GET MEDICAL TREATMENT OUT OF FEAR OF BEING DEPORTED!!!

More people will die because of that.  People.  Actual flesh and blood people.  Not statistics.  People. 

Not only the people who need medical care, but the people they come in contact with when they have a communicative disease. 

Your lack of empathy disgusts me.

I knew the murderer/child molester analogy was right around the corner! Saw that one coming a mile away. Republicans always trot that one out to justify any amount of stalling, red tape or invasion of privacy that will keep them from having to pay even one nickel to help somebody else. Play on peoples fear that some undeserving pedophile will get health care to keep people from caring whether or not illegal immigrants (who really are human beings) get basic medical care when they need it.

Seriously, Allen, your cold, calculating inability to grasp that undocumented workers are human beings with feelings and pain, much like the kind you might experience, is frightening.  I was mostly kidding around in the post above, but your comments are a stern reminder that some wingnuts really do lack that basic human decency.

Allen, you really have no idea how a hospital works, do you?

Hospitals have to walk a fine line in any sort of law enforcement endeavor. For example: If a kid comes in with a black eye and a broken nose, the hospital has to make a judgment call on whether or not this could be a case of child abuse and then contact the appropriate authorities if there is a reasonable doubt that it is.

Now, let’s say, for example, that all children who come into the hospital with a black eye and a broken nose are automatically reported to child protective services. Let’s say that the second you come into the hospital with a kid who has a black eye and a broken nose, you are immediately grilled by the hospital to prove that you didn’t punch your kid. Very few parents would seek medical treatment for their children (unless the kid was unconscious and not breathing) if it meant that they had to defend themselves against accusations of child abuse.

If someone comes into the hospital with a gun shot wound to be treated, we don’t immediately call them into account for whether or not they were involved in a robbery. When they say “hunting accident” we can assume that they are telling the truth unless the police arrive and ask for a suspect matching the description of the patient. If we make everyone who comes into the hospital prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were not involved in a robbery, people are going to be less likely to go to a hospital if they feel that the wound’s severity isn’t worth the stress and possibility of being falsely accused of a crime.

If you are an immigrant and your child needs to get immunized against Whooping Cough (don’t laugh, it’s making a comeback because people aren’t getting immunized like they should), you can play the odds. The chances of your child getting whooping cough are still pretty slim, but if you go to the hospital and get grilled about your citizenship, there is a much greater likelihood that you will be deported than your child getting whooping cough. And if you’re deported with your children and have to go back to your developing or 3rd world country, it’s pretty unlikely that your child will remain healthy for long, even if they had a whooping cough booster. So you don’t go. Hell, maybe you’ve got your green card and everything, but your fear of immigration is so great that you just want to steer clear of them unless it’s a dire emergency. Now, if there are 10 million undocumented workers, plus a percentage more of legal documented immigrants who fear overzealous racist immigration policies and just want to stay off the radar, you have a serious problem the moment the next virus starts to assert itself.

Now, if you look at all of the criminal possibilities that a hospital could be the enforcing agent for—whether it’s child abuse, robberies, or immigration, you’re talking about something that will require a whole new department. Doctors, Nurses, and even the people working the desks are way too busy treating and administering patients to sit down and figure out what crime we need to turn each patient over to the authorities for. And people like that don’t come cheap, so that would mean an increase in medical expenses across the board to pay for the Hospital Gestapo.

So instead of costing $30 for a blood draw, you can expect that blood draw to now cost closer to $50, all to support a structure that makes us all less safe.

I think that Allen’s medical care should be withheld until the doctors waste time running background checks to make sure he’s never had a parking ticket.  He may not be able to feel that other people are human, but perhaps if he has to live under the rules he proposes, he’d be able to understand how fucked up that is.  Because while Allen can’t grasp that others are human, I’ll bet he’s interested in not having pain for himself.

Putting aside all questions of concern for others (humor me for a minute, non-sociopaths), it is simply not the function of medical institutions to act as law enforcement. You’re essentially trying to impose an additional burden on them that they are not equipped to handle, not least because you will be putting medical institutions at odds with their stated missions, which is to treat people who need it. Even if on some abstract level this were a thing we should want to do (let me emphasize, it’s not), on a purely practical level we should avoid doing it so as to not compromise the functioning of hospitals, clinics, etc.

Personally, I’ve never been grilled on whether I’ve broken any minor laws before getting medical care.  I’m sure that Allen thinks I should—-after all, not being him, I’m not real, am I?—-but the very idea is so bizarre.  “Ms. Marcotte, we’d like to give you this breast exam, but before we do, we have to know: Have you ever exceeded the speed limit?  If so, we’ll need to hold you here until a doctor can come issue a ticket, and then we can get around to the examination.”

“Amanda, I never proposed punishing people for seeking medical care.  I merely seek enforcement of immigration law.”

...um, no, what you said was for Mr./Ms. Illegal to decide what is more important: Getting medical care and being deported or staying where they can work/live/eat and praying they can sweat it out.  ‘Cause that’s the practical result.

Why does there seem to be a perception among some Americans that undocumented people are, as a general rule, stupid?  You don’t think they can figure out that if you put them in jeopardy for getting medical care they will avoid getting medical care?

And do you seriously believe, in an age where we know an awful lot about disease pathology and the full costs of treatment vs. non-treatment, that having large populations living in America without healthcare is not going to have consequences, whether those people are documented US Citizens or not?

Sociopath?  Or Republican?  Or is that merely redundant?...

Mighty, the irony is that Mexico exceeds the U.S. in the basic civilization department, and they have universal health care.  I do believe that immunizations are free to children in Mexico, and the government has employed a set of incentives for parents to bring their kids in to get them.

Because while Allen can’t grasp that others are human, I’ll bet he’s interested in not having pain for himself.

You’ve made your point clearly, and now you’re giving into your anger with his sociopathy.  Take a deep breath - he really is not worth your emotional energy.

Fair enough.  It’s just…it’s like he saw my half-joking descriptions of the cold-heartedness on display and thought he’d exceed it.  But you’re right.  Beyond the freak-out, it’s also amusing to imagine that doctors should spend a huge percentage of their day not seeing patients and instead enforcing the law for the police.  The irony is that the wingnuts are scared that expanding health care access will create a doctor shortage.  You know what would create a much bigger one?  Forcing them to take time out of their days that could be used to see patients and spending it doing follow-up to make sure their patients haven’t broken any minor laws so they can turn them in for it.

Amanda—You mean Checare?

:p

Allen, I don’t have numbers for you because it ain’t my fight… I have single payer healthcare up here in Canada, and I love it. I’m not going to dig up numbers for you. But I do know that one of the most common benefits is that they pay your medical insurance premiums… for me it covers my whole family for $96.00 a month. My employer does not currently cover that. As a student, I got anual extended coverage for another $500 or so, mandatory, included in my tuition costs. That covers me for a year.

At any rate, hospitals are to treat sick people, not catch criminals, or enforce immigration law. When I go to a clinic, I generally do have to provide my care card if I’ve never been there before. They can look it up if I don’t have it, I think.

If catching criminals is more important to you than providing decent healthcare for thems what need it WHILE saving money at the same time, I don’t know that you and I could ever possibly agree. If people are scared of going to the doctor for non-emergency treatment, there is the very real possibility that it will become the far more expensive emergency treatment. Better to just suck it up, pay for it now, and avoid paying even more for it later.

Do you really want a murderer or child molester on the run to get treated and then get away because nobody bothered to run his name through a computer?

YES. I say this as a grown up who was molested as a child, too, so I’m a bit of an expert witness. People are people are people no matter what and they DESERVE the care they require, and I don’t at all want or expect hospitals to act as another arm of the police state.

What the fuck is wrong with you, Allen? It’s like you walked out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. I find you absolutely repulsive, YET I still want you to get the medical care you require when you need it.

jesslikewhoa, to be fair, it’s unlikely allen dresses nearly as well as a bret easton ellis sociopath…

I don’t know, chareth. I find that many right wing reactionaries appear to be dressed in the most fashionable styles of 20-30 years ago.

OK, this happens time and again, and as someone who appreciates discourse with (or at least understanding of) those I disagree with, it really pisses me off.

Lay. off. Allen.

Now, admittedly, I’ve only read half the thread. Maybe he turns into a crazy in later comments. But what I read was him explaining why the *reasoning behind* a particular position was wrong.

The claim: it’s bad to have hospitals do citizenship screening because it’s time consuming and you might die while waiting for it. (yes, there are other reasons, but this was the one addressed)
Allen’s point: Citizenship screening does not have to happen pre-care in order for it to be effective.

The response from the pandagon crowd? ‘Allen can’t grasp that others are human’.
Gee, way to encourage reasonable debate, people.

Making stupid arguments for a point that happens to be true is still stupid. Having someone point out that you’re making a stupid argument is good - it means you can come up with a non-stupid argument that might convince people who don’t already agree with you.

And our point, if you cared to read, was that once you turn hospitals into law-enforcement agencies, you create public health problems when people don’t want to receive treatment lest they fall under suspicion of the law.

jalmondale, with all due respect, some of us are literally dying out here without insurance. You can have all the discourse you like with sociopaths, but I’m gonna point out when an asshole is an asshole. My life depends on this reform, so I’m not big on playing politics.

Alright, having read through the rest of the thread, it seems like he actually is arguing that hospitals should enforce immigration law in a way that makes illegals more likely to get sick.

That said, his original point was valid: Assuming that Congress is going to pass a bill saying that illegal immigrants shouldn’t get care, it doesn’t really mean much if there are no enforcement mechanisms. And when Republicans point that out, they are (*gasp*) making a valid point.

The question of whether or not such a bill is a good idea or not is a separate issue.

Allen - I’m fascinated by your comparison of illegal immigration to murder and child molestation. 

Obviously, not all crimes are of equal gravity, and law enforcement resources are limited and must be rationed according to society’s needs. 

Now, I’m going to confess something - I think that murdering people and molesting children are much graver offenses than residing in a country without the permission of that country’s government.  Wouldn’t you agree with that?  So when you say that giving medical care to illegal immigrants without deporting them is like giving a murderer or child molester medical care and then letting him go free to kill and molest again, I find your perspective difficult to comprehend.

Unless, of course, you just hate the Messicans, and all this patently absurd let’s-turn-hospitals-into-law-enforcement-agencies nonsense is just disingenuous bullshit that you don’t really believe for a second.

@jessilikewhoa:
I’m not talking about reform as a whole (yes, it’s a good thing, but this thread was about services provided to those who are here illegally)

My argument was
“Making stupid arguments for a point that happens to be true is still stupid. Having someone point out that you’re making a stupid argument is good - it means you can come up with a non-stupid argument that might convince people who don’t already agree with you. “

The ‘point that happens to be true’, in this case specifically, is that denying illegal immigrants health care is probably not a good idea in the first place, and certainly that health reform bills shouldn’t spend a lot of time generating hurdles to getting care for anyone.

The stupid argument is that doing so would cause people to bleed to death.

It seems weird that people can’t move beyond that, particularly when so many actually good reasons for why illegals having access to care is a good thing have been presented in this thread alone.

Jalmondale:  “Citizenship screening does not have to happen pre-care in order for it to be effective.”

Yes, but effective at what?  Forcing human beings to decide between emergency medical care and deportation?  If someone finds that “effect” desirable, then they are not acknowledging the humanity of the actual, living, breathing human beings who will suffer and die because of it. 

Fuck Allen and racist shitheads like him.

no, the response from the pandagon crowd basically explained “citizenship screening does not have to happen pre-care in order for it to deter immigrants from seeking necessary care, thereby placing them and the rest of the population at greater risk”

You’re right Jalmondale, I can’t “get past” the idea that arresting people in emergency rooms would cause people to bleed to death.  Because.  It.  Would.  Actually.  Cause.  People.  To.  Bleed.  To.  Death.

Did it strike anyone else as amusing how after last night’s speech the GOP and its enablers on Fox and talk radio instantly turned into a pack of squealing kindergartners?

Hannity, in particular, was pretty funny (between lies) in moaning how Obama finally called the right on its fear-mongering crap.

@Gator90
Me, personally? I happen to have a whole lot of problems already with the conditions forced on illegal immigrants, and don’t see the need add hurdles to getting important medical procedures.

That’s not really the point, though - the argument ‘citizenship screening will cause people to bleed to death in the ER’ is false because ‘Citizenship screening does not have to happen pre-care in order for it to be effective.’

That citizenship screening for medical care is bad, and that we should be providing care to anyone in this country, whatever their status, is a separate issue. The distinction matters because our Congress has decided (or at least claims to have decided) that providing care to illegal immigrants is not something we want to do.

Republicans are legitimately saying that that claim, combined with the bill as it stands, is a little like putting the cookie jar next to the toddler and saying that you support a policy of ‘no sugary snacks’.

I merely seek enforcement of immigration law.

Then try consulting with the agencies charged with enforcement, instead of proposing to burden every other public & private entity with elaborate bureaucratic procedures to do others’ jobs for them.  I want ER nurses checking me & mine out instead of sifting through data to determine whether the guy who came in a couple of hours ahead of me should be deported.

For that matter, I also want immigrants, regardless of status—and all citizens, for that matter—to know how to drive & be properly licensed, to be vaccinated, and to seek medical care and/or take off work when ill so my odds of injury and illness are reduced.  But then, if I were invincible and [self-] righteous like conservatives, I guess nothing bad enough to negate the sweet, self-congratulatory joy of pissing on others would ever happen to me.

<blockquote>the immigration laws apply equally regardless of where you are born outside the United States.<blockquote>
And I just know that when people say “illegal immigration” they’re really talking about those hordes of white, white Canadians.

<blockquote>Do you really want a murderer or child molester on the run to get treated and then get away because nobody bothered to run his name through a computer?<blockquote>

I want our justice system to function in the way it should, which is NOT by punishing criminals with lack of health care. That’s not how we do things here. When was the last time you saw a murderer or a child molester sentenced to suffer with an untreated illness or wound?

dammit.

@JessSnark:
I refer you to #24 “Allen, if you want to bleed to death in E.R. while they run a background check on you, have at it. But it shouldn’t be the law. ” That there are legitimate reasons to want illegal immigrants to have access to health care is irrelevant to the original point he (and I) were making. Conflating two entirely separate arguments is not generally a helpful rhetorical tactic.

@Gator90 #83
<nitpick> Generally, when quoting, it’s wise to use an actual quote. I said ‘move beyond’ </nitpick>
The ‘move beyond’ was in reference to a refutation af a silly argument that was supporting a valid point. I’m not saying move beyond the *point* (i.e, should we provide health care to illegals, was Obama saying something that was tre or not), I’m saying get over the fact that in addition to good reasons, a shitty reason was presented and refuted.

You’re right Jalmondale, I can’t “get past” the idea that arresting people in emergency rooms would cause people to bleed to death.  Because.  It.  Would.  Actually.  Cause.  People.  To.  Bleed.  To.  Death.

QFT

also, I get the feeling that concern troll is concerned. bah.

“Now, I’m going to confess something - I think that murdering people and molesting children are much graver offenses than residing in a country without the permission of that country’s government.  Wouldn’t you agree with that?”

I agree, and I would guess virtually all Pandagonians would too. 

But don’t forget, we live in a country where it was a far greater crime for the President to get his dick sucked and then lie about it, than it was to invade another country on false pretenses and kill hundreds-of-thousands of innocent civilians, tap American’s phones, read our email, torture prisoners, send soldiers back into battle over-and-over until they are killed, commit suicide, or go psycho, encourage Big Finance run roughshod over our Economy, make our food unsafe, our air unsafe, flush a whole American city, and generally take a big steaming dump on our Constitution.

You can tell a lot about a society by what it spends money on, what its priorities are, and what it holds precious.  We don’t look very good in that light…

Only one republican I can think of took two seconds to rub a few braincells together and realize that if you deny illegal immigrants— you know, the ones swarming to America from developing or 3rd-world countries—health care, you’ll have a public health crisis on your hands when parents are too afraid of getting deported to bring their kids in for vaccinations, or to get treatment when some nasty virus is on the move.

Many immigrants’ countries of origin have serious issues with communicable disease, including diseases that we have mostly wiped out in this country.  I’d rather not contract MDR or XDR tuberculosis from some dude on the bus because rabid conservatives hate illegals.  But that’s just me.

@jessilikewhoa
“also, I get the feeling that concern troll is concerned. bah. “
Assuming, given the quote, that I’m the ‘concern troll’ (apologies if I’m not)
1) Concern trolling usually involves voicing some sort of, well, concern. Generally of the moral variety. Pissed-off-ed-ness is not a hallmark.
2) You quoted a response to me that was not a response to my argument. I am all for giving medical care to illegal immigrants - it would make my day if Obama stood up and gave a cogent argument for why that’s a good thing. My argument is that, if Obama is going to maintain that we aren’t giving health care to illegal immigrants, then the Republicans are correct that he’s being a bit shifty about it (as the bill does nothing to prevent it). If someone (anyone?) would like to engage that particular argument, that would be great.

The stupid argument is that doing so would cause people to bleed to death.

It seems weird that people can’t move beyond that…

Not so weird.  Move beyond it to where?  The point is made; and it’s not a stupid argument, it’s a winning one.  It doesn’t matter if the citizenship check occurs pre- or post-care; the fact of it happening at all will deter illegal immigrants from getting care, thus triggering all the negative effects and potential outcomes described.  This is touted as a desirable outcome by conservatives, for some reason that escapes me.

Republicans are correct that he’s being a bit shifty about it (as the bill does nothing to prevent it)

Well, no, not really.  The point is that the enforcement mechanism is the same one it’s always been - Immigration, and it would be a huge, new, and incredibly terrible idea to put an enforcement mechanism within the bill as the responsibility of the hospital as a condition of providing care, whether you do it pre or post.  Seriously, if someone suggested a highway bill that charged all drivers taxes based on road use automatically as they passed through checkpoints with a widget on their car that did that, would you say it’s “shifty” that the bill didn’t include the nuts and bolts of enforcement?  Wouldn’t you assume that enforcement would be done by, well, the police and state troopers, and the DMV during car inspections?  If you started yelling that no one said it should be done by the tollbooth workers as each car passed through, that might be a parallel.  Wrong people to do it, weird assumptions imbedded in the question to begin with, totally unworkable.  Also, if you had a real point (which you seemed to at the beginning) it was clearly and concisely addressed in comment #82.  No matter when you have people doing “enforcement” it will still deter illegal immigrants (and anyone else with a warrant out for them, it sounds like) from seeking care, and create horrible problems.

I should probably also mention that I can’t frigging stand Obama, so saying he’s not being “shifty” here isn’t out of loyalty by any means.

It doesn’t matter if the citizenship check occurs pre- or post-care; the fact of it happening at all will deter illegal immigrants from getting care, thus triggering all the negative effects and potential outcomes described.

No! What matters is that someone used a hyperbolic statement to make this argument. That is the most important thing at issue here! Unnecessary hyperbole! !!!!eleventy.

Concern trolling usually involves voicing some sort of, well, concern. Generally of the moral variety

You expressed concern that we were being unfair to Allen.

My argument is that, if Obama is going to maintain that we aren’t giving health care to illegal immigrants, then the Republicans are correct that he’s being a bit shifty about it (as the bill does nothing to prevent it).

Other than the part where Obama said his bill expressly did not authorize coverage of illegal immigrants, that is. 

The Republicans aren’t saying anything about lack of an enforcement mechanism; they are saying the President flat out is lying when he says illegals won’t be covered.  So Allen is trying to twist what the Republicans are actually saying to make it sound more reasonable; which I guess is understandable, but Allen’s not a Republican Congressman as far as I know.  Allen can interpret it however he likes, but Republicans are not saying what he claims they are saying.

“the argument ‘citizenship screening will cause people to bleed to death in the ER’ is false because ‘Citizenship screening does not have to happen pre-care in order for it to be effective.’”

Jalmondale- I hope I have quoted you correctly.  I’m going to assume you’re in good faith here, and I’m going to attempt to explain this even though it has been repeatedly explained above.  The problem with POST-care citizenship screening is that people will choose not to have medical care because they are afraid of being deported.  They won’t “bleed to death in the ER,” they’ll bleed to death elsewhere because they are afraid to go to the ER. 

And again, when I say “bleed to death,” that is only partially metaphorical.  It is a blanket metaphor for the multitude of illnesses and injuries that would go untreated under the post-care screening regime.  But I also mean it literally.  There would be people ACTUALLY BLEEDING, forced to decide whether the ACTUAL BLOOD DRAINING FROM THEIR BODIES is doing so in sufficiently copious amounts to necessitate emergency medical care even though the care would be obtained at incalculable cost to themselves and their families.  Some of these people would no doubt undertake to stop the bleeding themselves, and some would fail, causing them to ... you know.

My argument is that, if Obama is going to maintain that we aren’t giving health care to illegal immigrants, then the Republicans are correct that he’s being a bit shifty about it (as the bill does nothing to prevent it). If someone (anyone?) would like to engage that particular argument, that would be great.

It’s simple really, NOBODY is being given healthcare. nobody. We aren’t creating a single new Government funded program. Medicare and Medicaid already feature their own guidelines and enforcements re: undocumented immigrants. According to the President (as well as the current bills proposed as I understand it), the “Public Option” has to be self sufficient. It will most likely, if it passes get money for initial startup costs, but the President explicitly stated that the program must be financed by the premiums of those participating.

So, ok. There are proposed subsidies to help low income folks buy healthcare, via the “Public Option” or private insurers. Those subsidies would in theory have to be applied for, or would come in the form of a tax credit. If it’s an application process I imagine it would function similar to applying for Medicaid, which is a clusterfuck of red tape (speaking here from experience) designed to screen out even those who qualify for the program. I imagine it would be pretty fucking simple for the government to run Social Security numbers through the database before granting such subsidies, they being the people who run the Social Security system and all.

If the subsidies come in the form of a tax credit, again Social Security numbers are involved.

So fine, I concede that perhaps “illegal immigrants” will be able to pay full premiums for health insurance. That in no way correlates to “giving healthcare to illegal immigrants.” I should also mention here that should these immigrants pay full premiums they are helping to subsidize all the other plan members’ care too.

Hell, I’m a citizen and nobody has proposed yet to even “give” me healthcare.

Unless “give” has another meaning I haven’t heard before.

Here’s Allen’s perfect outcome:  Edith Rodriguez was refused help at the ER because they thought she might be a drug-seeker.  The police were called.  When they ran her record and discovered that she had an outstanding warrant, they arrested her and started carrying her to the patrol car.

She died on the way to the patrol car.  It turned out that she was in pain because she had a perforated bowel, which the doctors had missed on her previous two trips to the ER.

There you go, Allen—your best case scenario.  A known criminal got the death penalty for trying to seek medical help in a crisis.  USA! USA! USA!

Assuming that Congress is going to pass a bill saying that illegal immigrants shouldn’t get care, it doesn’t really mean much if there are no enforcement mechanisms.

Yeah, but that wasn’t his supposed point.  It’s all agreed that no health care reform bill can or should be expected to change the status quo, where people who need emergency care get it.  What he wants is that instead of doing what they do now, which is give care and bill later, the hospital should use their time and resources doing background checks on all patients (or at least non-white patients) who aren’t in immediate danger of dying to make sure they’re citizens before they get any level of care, though he tightly conceded that people shouldn’t be allowed to die.  It does, however, seem that he’s fine with leaving limbs broken and other non-fatal emergencies go untreated until you pass a citizenship test, which I’m not fine with, as a human being who a) has empathy and b) is self-interested enough to not want ER waits to be even longer while they verify people’s citizenship before providing care.

He’s so eager to waste time and resources to deny basic care.  That’s why we’re shocked.  The cold “rationality” he applies to the art of wasting time and money to expand suffering is why we think he’s acting sociopathic.  It’s really not rational, unless your goal is expanded human suffering.

Assuming that Congress is going to pass a bill saying that illegal immigrants shouldn’t get care, it doesn’t really mean much if there are no enforcement mechanisms.

There are very few exceptions to doctor patient privilege. Doctors need to report child abuse, elder abuse, if someone is an immediate danger to themselves and/or others and gunshot wounds. But the doctors are not law enforcement nor are they expected to be criminal investigators. These exceptions are made because the people that commit these crimes are considered to be an immediate, specified danger to an individual/or the public. Just by being an “illegal” immigrant does not make you an inherent immediate danger to an individual or the general public.

Again, stabilize and deport in the case of illegals.  I said nothing about depriving emergency care.

Some other comments have addressed this is some manor but it bears repeating. After working in a medical clinic that sees indigent patients, I can tell you communicable diseases spread like wildfire among those that can’t or don’t get care. So what about vaccines and flu shots? If a clinic has to report or somehow start the deportation process “illegal” immigrants won’t get care. I don’t know if you know this but they don’t live on isolated islands. Those diseases will quickly spread to your “deserving” Americans.

That’s not really the point, though - the argument ‘citizenship screening will cause people to bleed to death in the ER’ is false because ‘Citizenship screening does not have to happen pre-care in order for it to be effective.

So now hospitals, clinics and doctors have to waste resources to find out if someone might or might not be a citizen after they give that person care? I thought we were going for cost effective healthcare reform.

I’m astonished you view anybody who needs medical care as above the law.  If I rob a bank, should I fake the sniffles so I can get away with it? Let me know.

This argument is bunk. No one gets away with a crime by getting medical treatment. The doctor doesn’t write anyone a note saying “It’s OK this person broke the law because they got medical treatment.” The argument is doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics are NOT law enforcement. It would be expensive, inefficient, unreasonable, irrational and even impossible to expect them to do investigate the citizenship of every patient. Not to mention the bureaucracy that would drain resources from actually treating patients.

I have to admit, conservatism is looking more and more like it’s just about maximizing human suffering.

You’re just not using the same definition of ‘human’ as the wingnuts.  Humans include affluent white male Christianists (or the minor male offspring of such), and all fetuses.

Excluded from the definition are women, minorities, the poor, the working class, the middle class, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, non-fucking-insane Protestants, anyone born outside the borders of GodblesstheUSA (except John McCain, sometimes), vegetarians, the entire city of San Francisco, any public servant who takes the term seriously, Democrats, and any soldier with less than 3 stars on his collar.

By their logic, they’re minimizing human suffering, which is exclusively caused by a) taxes and b) exposure to non-human creatures as defined above (except those who are both appropriately servile and providing some good or service which the human wishes to have).

One minute, you’re thinking, “God, it’s not right that a hard-working person who does everything right should be bankrupted and left out to die because their disease wasn’t profitable for some insurance company,” and the next minute, you turn into a vagina.

I’d call that as close to perfect a description of the mindset as is possible.  Dang, Amanda, you sure got a way with words. 

Although, sociopaths aside, it can’t be that hard to be a right wing asshole, (though it does take some regular maintenance by getting regular reinforcements to your resentment by Rush and his ilk).  There’s a little bit of selfish authoritarian asshole in everyone, I think.  I’m a reliable commie socialist on most issues but I have to cop to feeling rigidly judgmental over certain situations.  The biggest one for me is people having kids when I think they shouldn’t.  When I see that family on the news who is in line at the food bank and learn that they’ve been unemployed and sporadically homeless for years yet they have 3 kids and one on the way I really have to struggle not to be a self-righteous dick in my thoughts toward them.  I will sometimes scream “Stop having fucking kids!” at the TV if I’m alone.  That’s my personal trigger, and I know that some of my equally liberal friends have their own.

Assuming that Congress is going to pass a bill saying that illegal immigrants shouldn’t get care, it doesn’t really mean much if there are no enforcement mechanisms.

I have to say, if I were Barney Frank and this was pointed out to me by Republican House members, my answer would be, “Hey, great, thanks for catching that!  You know, we’re all real busy here rehauling the system, so why don’t you guys take care of hashing out what the enforcement mechanism should be.  What’s that?  You don’t anything to do with the bill?  Well, then, what are you bitching about?”

I will sometimes scream “Stop having fucking kids!” at the TV if I’m alone.

Okay, now I’m picturing you like Seymour in this scene from Ghost World.

I have to say, if I were Barney Frank and this was pointed out to me by Republican House members, my answer would be, “Hey, great, thanks for catching that!  You know, we’re all real busy here rehauling the system, so why don’t you guys take care of hashing out what the enforcement mechanism should be.  What’s that?  You don’t anything to do with the bill?  Well, then, what are you bitching about?”

What’s even better about that strategy is that it puts Republicans in the no-win position of having to actually enforce the immigration laws they pay so much lip service to for the rabid base while winking and nudging the Big Business low wage employers who hire millions of undocumented immigrants.

I think grocery stored and restaurants should run an immigration status and criminal background check on people before they sell them food.  You don’t want a child molester to eat food and stay alive, do you?

Sorry, this is long and took a while to write. It only includes responses to comments through #103.

@liberalrob #95
“The point is made; and it’s not a stupid argument, it’s a winning one.  It doesn’t matter if the citizenship check occurs pre- or post-care” - let me make this abundantly clear, because it seems to have been missed (repeatedly): the argument that I am referring to, specifically, as ‘the stupid one’ is the one expressed in comment #24 by Ms. Marcotte. As (I would hope) has been made obvious by my previous posts, I am not condemning every single argument made on this thread. Specifically, that means I’m not talking about whether or not denying care is a good thing.

@liberalrob #99
I was annoyed that people ‘round these parts tend to jump down the throats of anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. That’s not generally considered a ‘concern troll’, at least as I know the definition.
The bill expressly denies *subsidies* to illegal immigrants. So this: “the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally” is very shifty if there isn’t a mechanism to prevent the reforms from applying to those who are here illegally. Again (since it seems it can’t be said enough), the shifty-ness of the President is entirely separate from whether or not illegals *should* be covered.

@Gator90, #100 Sorry about the snarky nitpicking - in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have tried to mix humor with serious argumentation =).
The argument, as presented in #24, was not that people won’t go to the ER. It was that we can’t put enforcement mechanisms in the bill because it would be too time consuming in emergency situations to use those mechanisms. That is the argument that I say is false. As I have said before, the presence of one false justification does not mean there are not true justifications. If you take as a premise that Obama is being truthful, and does not support the coverage of illegal immigrants, and that the bill before Congress would in fact not apply to illegal immigrants, then *of course* illegal immigrants will die as a result. And *of course* that’s a bad thing. And perhaps the bill should allow the reforms to apply to illegal immigrants. But the question at hand was: does the bill prevent thereforms from applying to illegal immigrants, and is that a *feasible* (not necessarily a wise/compassionate) thing to do? And the answers at the point I entered the conversation appear to be no and yes, respectively.

@Amanda Marcotte, #103
I don’t think there’s been anything presented to show that citizenship checks post-emergency care would create longer wait times in the ER. That said, I agree that the sentiments that Allen expressed later on in the thread were pretty terrible. My particular beef was with the initial reaction to him, before he had said anything indicating a seething hatred of immigrants. Specifically, after he had posted #15 & #20, both of which seem perfectly reasonable, he started drawing a lot of un-earned hatred from peeps, including comment #24, which was the one that I’ve taken extended objection to.

Overall, what I’ve heard from people is that they don’t want to enforce not applying reforms to illegal immigrants because illegal immigrants deserve health care too. And that point has been made very cogently, but kind of misses the point that there could be enforcement mechanisms to prevent that. Such enforcement mechanisms would result in greater suffering, and are probably a very bad idea (because they would actually limit illegal immigrants access to health care), but if Obama is going to claim his reforms won’t apply to illegal immigrants, without any means of guaranteeing that, he is wrong. It may be good that he’s wrong, but he’s still wrong. And when Republicans point that out, they are actually right.

@Gavel Down, #96:
I think you’re raising a similar point to Amanda’s - enforcement is feasible, but bad because what’s being enforced is bad. In other words, not applying health care reforms to illegal immigrants is a bad thing. I am not arguing against that. And honestly, it seems like the people who should enforce that certain folks don’t get to use certain programs to pay for their health care should be the health care providers (assuming that such enforcement were to take place). The underlying problem is that the ‘enforcement’ is designed to prevent illegal immigrants from accessing healthcare, so the deterrence would be a feature, not a bug.
(CONTINUED)

(RESUMED)
@jessilikewhoa, #101
Sorry, poor choice of words on my part. His exact claim was:
“There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”
The bill specifically prohibits public subsidies going to illegal immigrants. If the public option is considered part of the reforms, and illegal immigrants can purchase it, that sure seems like the reforms would apply to them (and certainly that reforms will insure them). That this is good, that it doesn’t hurt anybody, that due to positive externalities it probably helps actual citizens, misses the point that the President’s claim was at best shifty and at worst a lie.

To briefly summarize the common threads of these arguments:
1) Allowing illegal immigrants access to care, and perhaps the ability to pay full premiums for the public option, is good.
2) We could pass a bill that would prevent illegal immigrants from accessing the public option. This would reduce their access to care and result in deaths for them, but it would not lead to scenarios like that presented in comment #24.
3) The President has claimed or strongly implied that a) no illegal immigrants will become insured through a public option and b) other reforms will also not apply to them.
4) The bill only prohibits access to subsidies, and does nothing to prevent illegal immigrants from buying in to the public option.

There still appears to be some disagreement about (2), but the disagreement seems largely predicated on the idea that reducing access to care for illegal immigrants and not treating them equally is an unacceptable problem with the enforcement mechanism (when in fact, the whole reason for the enforcement mechanism, and the sentiment expressed in (3), is the idea that they shouldn’t be treated equally).

I argue that given (4) (and to some extent (2)), (3) could be characterized as anything ranging from ‘shifty’ to ‘lie’. This appears to be the Republican point.

I would also argue, as an entirely separate point, that (3) leads to reprehensible decision making, violates (1), and leads to policies such as (2) which have results that should be unacceptable to empathetic people. So my solution to reconciling (3) and (4) is to just admit that we’re allowing illegal immigrants access to care.

The Republican solution would be to implement (2), which many people on here have done an excellent job excoriating as a policy choice.

@shakahi, #104
“So now hospitals, clinics and doctors have to waste resources to find out if someone might or might not be a citizen after they give that person care? I thought we were going for cost effective healthcare reform. “
If (a) you say a bill is going to do X, and (b) it doesn’t do X, and (c) X wastes resources, that doesn’t make your original statement true.

jalmondale. at this point you’re just being ridiculous. When republicans claim the bill is going to give coverage to illegal immigrants there is an implication there that they will be covered by YOUR HARDWORKING AMERICAN TAXDOLLARS!!!!111!11!!11eleventy

I mean, this argument your making, it’s like saying “if we keep selling shoes illegal immigrants will purchase those shoes with their own money.”

no, just no. that isn’t what the right-wing is claiming and you know it.

and I stand by my concern troll statement, there is no way you’re arguing in good faith. unless you’re an idiot….oh jeeze, I’m sorry, are you an idiot?

I’m done.

The bill only prohibits access to subsidies, and does nothing to prevent illegal immigrants from buying in to the public option.

But that becomes a separate question—if illegal workers are buying into the public option, they are by definition paying for something.  They’re not being given a free gift—they’re forking over their own money.  Are we supposed to get into a situation where we restrict the goods that people can buy based on their immigration status?  Should car dealerships start checking birth certificates and/or green cards?  Should banks call ICE if someone wants to open an account with them but doesn’t have proof of citizenship?

I think two different points are being conflated (deliberately, I think, in Allen’s case).  There’s the “should they get a subsidy to buy health insurance?” question and “should they be allowed to buy health insurance at all?” question.  Declaring that illegal workers shouldn’t be allowed to purchase health insurance at all seems like a really, really bad idea for all of the public health reasons stated above.

I think it’s funny that wingnuts argue against people spending money in their country while comparing that act to getting robbed.

Buying insurance?  That’s paying money.  Getting what you paid for?  That’s bad, somehow?

It’s not like immigrants will be getting subsidies.  They don’t have the proper tax-IDs, as per a different section of the law.

Who cares where someone came from, if they paid the fare?

My argument is that, if Obama is going to maintain that we aren’t giving health care to illegal immigrants, then the Republicans are correct that he’s being a bit shifty about it (as the bill does nothing to prevent it). If someone (anyone?) would like to engage that particular argument, that would be great.

Given the proposed reforms are insurance reforms, this whole business of “Bwah, my tax dollars are paying for the brown peoples’ doctor visits” is rather off tangent.

Ideally health insurance should correlate with health care, but as anyone with a few brain cells knows, it doesn’t.  (My father-in-law, a federal government retiree, who has the great insurance, has no access to preventative health care because of a lack of primary care physicians in his area.)  Health insurance reform isn’t necessarily health care reform.

Nevertheless, since the proposed reforms primarily address health insurance concerns—coverage and affordability—conflagrating these reforms with health care for illegal aliens is just more Reich Wing misdirection.

And if (huge “if”) a handful of illegal aliens wanted to actually purchase health insurance, who gives a flying fuck?  Wouldn’t that mean they were then paying into the system?  If they are paying for a product, shouldn’t they be entitled to the same protections as the rest of us (an end to rescission, etc.)?

Yeah, I know.  Allen and his fellow creatures of the night would say, “No.”  Because illegal aliens have broken our most sacred law and swam across the Rio Grande without a permission slip, which we all know makes the baby Jesus cry.

When I see that family on the news who is in line at the food bank and learn that they’ve been unemployed and sporadically homeless for years yet they have 3 kids and one on the way I really have to struggle not to be a self-righteous dick in my thoughts toward them.  I will sometimes scream “Stop having fucking kids!” at the TV if I’m alone.  That’s my personal trigger, and I know that some of my equally liberal friends have their own.

I know what you mean, but there’s a huge difference between “use contraception if you can’t afford kids” and “don’t get sick if you can’t afford to pay for it”, which seems to be the right-wing logic.  I don’t like human stupidity, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make people suffer for it (save on the Internet), and I’m not going to try to make people suffer because *maybe* they were stupid.

@jessilikewhoa
I might counter that, if you actually think I support denying coverage/impending the purchase of health care by illegal immigrants, you have serious reading comprehension issues.

The big pseudo-scandal that this post was about was the following exchange:
Obama: “There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”
Rep. Wilson: “You lie!”

Now, leaving aside the rudeness of Rep. Wilson, the question is, was Obama’s statement true or false?
If a public option counts as a reform, and an illegal immigrant can buy in to the public option, then Obama’s statement was false. I’d refer you to the last two sentences of #112 as to where I differ from the Republicans about what to do about it, but it seems pretty clear that Obama was not just stating a (true) “offensive non-opinion” as the post puts it.

@Mnemosyne
I agree with you that it’s a really bad idea (see (1) in my post at #112), but it seems to be a clear implication of Obama’s statement. And the fact that Obama is wrong about what the bill does is, in this case, good - I wouldn’t want Congress to be considering a bill that actually did what he says it does. But if he’s going to say something factually incorrect, and someone calls him a liar over it, I don’t see what the big hoo-ha is (unless it’s about rudeness, which this post doesn’t seem to suggest).

I agree with you that it’s a really bad idea (see (1) in my post at #112), but it seems to be a clear implication of Obama’s statement.

I don’t see how.  Again, we’re talking about the difference between people being given a subsidy to buy health insurance and people purchasing health insurance.  If the worry is that illegal workers will somehow be able to get a public subsidy when they’re already banned from getting other public subsidies like food stamps and welfare, that seems like a bogus worry to me because we already have an enforcement mechanism in place.  Why would we set up a whole separate agency just to monitor one part of that system?

If we start to say that illegal workers shouldn’t even be allowed to buy into the system with their own money, what other goods and services are we going to decide that people can’t use their own money to buy unless they have proof of citizenship?

For anyone who’s stuck around to read the previous comments, I have a question. Have you found any sites where (civil) debate is encouraged/seems to flourish? I don’t actually expect to remake pandagon into a place where debate of the party line is tolerated, and so I’m curious if anyone has found other sites where pointing out that Obama actually did, technically, utter a falsehood doesn’t get you called an idiot and a troll.
And hey, there’s something in it for you, too - if I find such a site, I won’t be arguing with all of you here.

If a public option counts as a reform, and an illegal immigrant can buy in to the public option, then Obama’s statement was false.

If that’s the criterion, then the right could correctly claim that any public works program should not be done because it may benefit illegal workers.  Road repairs?  New fire engines?  Additional cops on the street?  Nope, nope, and nope—people who are here illegally would benefit from them, so we can’t do them at all unless we can check the citizenship of everyone driving down the street.

There’s a reason that the police in California are not allowed to ask the immigration status of people they arrest—when they did, people who were here illegally stopped reporting crimes or coming forth as witnesses because they were afraid they would be arrested.  Asking about the immigration status of a crime witness or victim made citizens less safe, not more safe.

The same principle applies here.  Insisting that only citizens be allowed to buy health insurance will actually make those citizens less safe from things like epidemics.

Sorry man, if you want to keep claiming he lied, you’re going to have to go somewhere stupider.

First line of the AP’s “Fact Check” story:

Rep. Joe Wilson is wrong.

#94: So, if I’m following you, the legit argument that the Republicans are presenting is that the current bill will provide care (and is likely intended to provide care) to illegal immigrants and the evidence for this is the absence of anything in the bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting care.

You know what else is missing from this legislation?  Any provision to prevent bear attacks in kindergartens.  Therefore, Obama and the Dems want to feed our children to bears. 

I eagerly await the GOP’s brave stance against feeding America’s children to bears.  If they don’t take such a stance, clearly they support such a horrific outcome.  Won’t someone think of the children?

For anyone who’s stuck around to read the previous comments, I have a question. Have you found any sites where (civil) debate is encouraged/seems to flourish?

Congratulations on the world’s most passive-aggressive flounce I have ever read!

It’s a shame that we can’t point out the small fact that it would probably be cheaper to enable undocumented workers (people are not illegal) to buy into a public option since we have the least efficient system possible.  It’s not as if immigrants don’t use medical services and, when they do, someone pays for it.  A system in which we deported them after using medical care would be even worse since they would be deterred from preventive or early care (see above) and thus would be even more prone to use ERs.  Someone would have to pay for the ER services and it obviously would not be the deported individual.  It’s sad to me that we can’t do a simple cost/benefit analysis and realize that the cheapest option is to cover more people and we can’t talk about it because the thought of an undocumented worker (whose cheap labor we rely upon for cheap goods/services) getting health care is so viscerally troubing that it leads to inapprorpriate outbursts of rage.  It’s like the debate over women who use drugs during pregnancy.  Everyone says they care about the child but they are unable to do the best thing for the child (give the mother drug treatment and vocational services) because it is just so darn important to punish the mother.

No one gets away with a crime by getting medical treatment. The doctor doesn’t write anyone a note saying “It’s OK this person broke the law because they got medical treatment.” The argument is doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics are NOT law enforcement.

Good point. How many rapists, muggers or burglars have sustained cuts needing stitching, for example? And usually, they get it. Because doctors and nurses are not fucking equipped to screen everyone who comes in with a cut needing stitches, just in case it was sustained in the course of an illegal act. Duh.

I suggest the blog “Sadly, No”. They are extremely kind and gentle to all comers, and would never mock a conservative. Truly you will not find a more polite and tolerant crowd. :p

Do you really want a murderer or child molester on the run to get treated and then get away because nobody bothered to run his name through a computer?

I know this was a half-a-billion comments ago but I am just tickled by the idea that we would all for some reason agree that it’s better for all the child molesters out there to have untreated diseases. Seriously. (Also tickled by the idea that all child molesters have their name in a database somewhere. Don’t we all wish.)

I suggest the blog “Sadly, No”. They are extremely kind and gentle to all comers, and would never mock a conservative. Truly you will not find a more polite and tolerant crowd.

Likewise, you will find “Jesus’s General” open and welcome to Christian, conservative, and dare I say manly values.

Why stop at medical care is what I want to know. Why not make sure we screen anyone who buys or accesses anything. Library materials. Rental DVDs. Groceries.

“We could have caught that child molester. He was right here at the checkout counter. But he got away with his Hungry Man meal and Diet Coke!!1!!”