Hillary Clinton healthcare plan begins with possible Big Lie

See if you can spot the possible whopper contained in Hillary Clinton's new healthcare plan (new report here, described at her site here):

Hillary Clinton unveiled the third part of her plan to ensure that all Americans have affordable, quality health insurance... ...her American Health Choices Plan will secure, simplify and ensure choice in health coverage for all Americans. This Plan covers every American - finally addressing the needs of the 47 million uninsured...

I'm going to guess that her plan would also cover illegal aliens, and if that's true then she's lying. Illegal aliens and legal immigrants are not "Americans"; they're foreign citizens: Mexicans, Brazilians, and so forth.

If it does in fact include illegal aliens, here's an accurate version of the above:

Hillary Clinton unveiled the third part of her plan to ensure that all "Americans" with that word defined to include all American citizens together with everyone that Mexico and other countries can send us have affordable, quality health insurance... ...her Residing-in-America Health Choices Plan will secure, simplify and ensure choice in health coverage for all Americans and everyone else who can make it over the border. This Plan covers every American and many more besides, just as long as they can make it through the desert or overstay their visa - finally addressing the needs of the 47 million uninsured including those illegal aliens that the Democratic Party has helped come here...

UPDATE: Via this we learn the somewhat surprising news that someone from the MSM asked Hillary's people about this issue. If it was CNN that asked they probably would have mentioned that, so it was probably another source:

Senior policy adviser Laurie Rubiner [says:] "That's one we're going to have to think through a little bit... We have not dealt with every single detail with this plan"... ...When asked if it would be safe to assume that the Democratic frontrunner, at this point, has no position on coverage for illegal immigrants advisers answered "yes" and said the plan does not "at this point" deal with that issue.

I could make a joke about Hillary waiting until her co-chair Fabian Nunez hears back from the Mexican government, but instead I'd like to point out how pathetic it is that a presidential candidate has unveiled a major plan and doesn't have or won't disclose how it intends to deal with a possible major downside to the plan.

UPDATE 2: From this:

The new Clinton plan doesn't include the words "citizen" nor "immigrant," but does refer to "Americans" 30 times. A Clinton spokesman said the plan doesn't cover illegal immigrants; he didn't respond to a follow-up inquiry asking about other noncitizens such as residents with green cards.

I don't entirely trust in the solidity of those statements because they're appearing in an obscure part of the WSJ and the spokesman isn't named. There's always the chance she could back off from those statements.

Immigration2007b · Mon, 09/17/2007 - 13:31 · · Importance: 1