After it was released, I searched through Obama's healthcare plan for anything relating to immigration matters. I didn't find anything that set off any alarm bells and there were a few things that seemed to indicate that at least part of it was only for those eligible. On the other hand, he spoke yesterday in Green Bay, Wisconsin and said [1] among other things this:
All we're saying is for the 46 million people who don't have health insurance, or for people who've got health insurance, like you, who are self-employed but the premiums and the deductibles are so high that you almost never get prevention services -- you've put off going to a doctor until you're really sick because of the out-of-pocket expenses -- let's change some of those incentives so that we get more people getting prevention, more people getting health care to keep them healthy, as opposed to just treating them when they get sick.
As discussed in the August 2008 post "Census Bureau releases 2007 poverty/lack of health insurance numbers: watch out for liars", millions of that "46 million" are either legal immigrants or illegal aliens. In any case, a good percentage of the "46 million" figure that Obama is using are here illegally. And, a month before, I failed to get confirmation from Obama's healthcare advisor David Cutler that the then-current proposal was only for U.S. citizens.
Great intellectual that he is, I'm sure that Barack Obama will one of these days either stop using the wrong numbers or will admit that his plan includes illegal aliens. We just need to wait for it.
[1] whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/
Remarks-by-the-President-in-Town-Hall-Meeting-on-Health-Care-in-Green-Bay-Wisconsin
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