Blog - Joe Wilson Voted to Provide Taxpayer Money for Illegal Immigrants' Healthcare 
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Joe Wilson Voted to Provide Taxpayer Money for Illegal Immigrants' Healthcare
September 11, 2009 - by Donny Shaw
On Wednesday night, Rep. Joe Wilson [R, SC-2], shouted “You lie!” at President Obama when he said that the healthcare bill would not cover illegal immigrants. “The supporters of the government takeover of healthcare and liberals who want to give healthcare to illegals are using my opposition as an excuse to distract from the critical questions being raised about this poorly conceived plan,” Wilson said the next day in a campaign fundraising video.
However, in 2003, Wilson voted to provide federal funds for illegal immigrants’ healthcare. The vote came on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which contained Sec. 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually between 2003 and 2008 for government reimbursements to hospitals who provide treatment for uninsured illegal immigrants. The program has been extended through 2009 and there is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to make it permanent.
Hospitals have a legal obligation to treat everyone who comes in seeking care, regardless of citizenship status, insurance or other characteristics. This means that hospitals treat millions of people every year who don’t have the means to pay. Obviously, this drives up the nation’s healthcare costs overall. Section 1011 helps cushion the costs for hospitals, but it’s not nearly enough to cover the actual costs in most areas.
To be fair, Section 1011 is just a small part of a much larger bill that contained many Republican priorities. Still, Wilson’s protest against the current healthcare reform proposal giving coverage to illegal immigrants (which is false), is in direct contradiction to his 2003 vote. Allowing illegal immigrants to purchase unsubsidized healthcare through the Exchange that would be set up under the current proposal wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent, and it would be a step towards fixing the problem that Section 1011 was designed to throw federal money at.
Here are a few more links on Wilson and the healthcare reform bill:
- Wilson’s OpenCongress profile
- Wilson’s OpenCongress Wiki page
- The House healthcare bill
- The line in the bill blocking subsidies for illegal immigrants
- The healthcare bill’s tax increases
- 5 major lies about the healthcare bill debunked
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Comments
Displaying 31-60 of 303 total comments.
The federal government has been in charge of medicare for decades.
I guess you trust greedy insurance companies more.
Medicare was established as a “last recourse” insurance program because no one else would insure a person over a certain age. That’s the only reason people “like” it, and not all of us like it, either. Our current health care system is so good that people are living longer, so the financials did not work out. How are you going to extend that same or a similar program without it being farther in the red? And to say that “savings” can be squeezed out of Medicare to help pay for ObamaCare is ludicrous; you can’t squeeze any savings out of a program that is FLAT BROKE. It can’t be done.
Since the Auto Industry was bailed out by Bush, generally due to the fact that they have refused to make cars that Americans want to buy for the last 30 years, perhaps having the government run them will prove to get the message across to them regarding better emissions and gas mileage or alternatives to fuels we now use. That would be great for the environment which is being affected by the lack of innovations from GM, Ford and others. As far as Russia, foreign makers have out paced and out innovated the US for years hence the need for their bailout earlier this year! Also. there is nothing wrong with having a reminder call from your doctor concerning a appointment scheduled for the next day! That means that someone else can get in to see the doctor if you fail to show up…
It is considered a way to eliminate all the problems with various billers and payment departments all of which have a tendency to get things wrong holding up payments to the providers until they just decide to no longer take certain insurances or medicare or medicaid. Having one payer means streamlining the payment structure and allows for more closely regulated billing procedures etc., both of which would lower the overall cost of doing the business…
The government is going to make the system more efficient, is that what you are saying? Sure, that happens every time, right?
my name is Mike. I live in B. C. Canada, and benefit constantly from our truly bad system of medicine. YOU LIE! sorry Mr. President he really does.
First, I pay about $1,500 ea yr for my meds, etc. diabetic and 3 heart attacks, 2 occurred in the good old USA, the hospitals were thrilled to actually have a live Canadian, able to pay + guaranteed by a gov’t, as they rang the clinical cash register. Cha-Ching!!!
Now, I pay, $54.00 ea month, 4 my B.C. Med Ins Plan. Married people, ( incl married gay couples and fam.) pay $160. ea mnth. the hobo, on the street gets immediate and full care in our system.
SSSSSSHHHH! My retirement plan is to be a hobo in Canada. Don’t tell everybody for gosh sakes!
The last Canadian who came to our hospital had to drive back to Quebec, from California, with a punctured lung, because they would not cover surgery. It was deemed “Non-Life Threatening”…..Great Benefit.
“Tell me how it so smart to have one all powerful entity, i.e. federal government, in charge of your well being”
That was such an idiotic comment. You obviously don’t understand how single payer works.
We understand how single payer works. It’s the “Golden Rule,” of “He who has all the gold makes all the rules.” Single Payer = Singular Controller/decider/definer/delineator/dictator.
The government in Canada does not run the health-care system they provide insurance. And what they also do is make changes when they see the system isn’t working, unlike in the US.
And where have you been the last 40 years. Big private insurance companies have bought up all the smaller companies so instead of competition we have a few huge companies running the whole thing. These companies, by the way, discriminate on a daily basis. They deny coverage, deny benefits, deny treatment. Why? Because Wall Street says they are paying too much out in coverage. So instead of being responsive to the customers they are more beholding to money on Wall Street.
You’d have to be on Medicare or a complete idiot to think the system in the US isn’t broken. The reason I say Medicare is most people love this government run program.
And let me tell you another thing. If we relied on Republicans to build cars the ones built in Russia would be far superior.
KennethA, any insurance of any type does not pay for everything that can go wrong. I have a High Deductible policy, which allows me to contribute to a Health Savings Account. At least if my insurance does not cover absolutely everything I have the ability to pay for it from my HSA account and get tax credits for it. THIS is the plan we should be going to. Insurance with a sizeable component of personal responsibility and tax incentives for the responsible among us.
Perhaps some people are too weak to make themselves that responsible and cannot live without the government confiscating the money they can’t bring themselves to save.
I don’t care which political party in what country built a car; it would always suck.
Of course, it’s much better to have profit driven companies in charge of your well being.
Must be very smart— it works for them.
Uhh, if everyone is treated the same, they’re not being discriminated against. Just go back to being a ditto-head.
British and Canadian medical systems provide everyone excellent care; the only problems with socialized medicine is when it is underfunded, and where, as in the US, healthcare for all could be paid for with less than we spend now to insure 70% of our citizens, we should. That’s the type of “discrimination” we all need.
And your car metaphor sucks. If you like American cars from the last 20 years, then the current system is for you . . . if you like well-designed, high quality cars like BMWs, Porsches, Lexus, etc., then you like cars from places with single-payer systems. How much better would our auto industry have done if it didn’t have to bear the costs of paying for healthcare?
Hahahahah, on the last sentence I would have to say, “I don’t know, but you can ask the left-wing heads of the UAW!”
Single payer is what Canada has and guess what, they have excellent health care.
You like Canada? Go to freakin’ Canada. But when you get sick, don’t drag your carcass to the US for treatment like so many Canadians do.
Canadians have always been arrogant toward and jealous of the US. They would love us to make the same mistakes that they’ve made, just to feel “even.”
Your comparison with government cars is terrible. In Canada, the government is essentially the insurer, not the healthcare provider. You go to the doctor and the government pays your bill. People are free to choose their doctors. My wife is Canadian, and her family’s had the same family doctor since she was a little girl. They liked him, so they stuck with him. I can’t say the same for myself here in the U.S. since I have to choose a doctor in-network to get the best benefits (or any coverage at all if it is an HMO). There have been many times when I have been forced to change doctor because my employer (my dad’s employer when I was younger) changed provider and my current doctor was not part of the network.
Single payer is irrelevant- it is not on the table. Stick to what is being proposed, which is simply an jnsurance plan that would cover all at a reasonable cost.
“Tell me how it so smart to have one all powerful entity, i.e. federal government, in charge of your well being instead of several businesses competing for it?”
Fact: Alabama has only one all-powerful entity in charge of everyone’s well-being. It’s called Blue Cross / Blue Shield. The cost of health insurance in Alabama is skyrocketing, along with BC/BS’s profits.
I know what you’re going to say: “This is a free country, by god, and everyone should have to take it up the a** because their stockholders have a God-given right to profit off everyone’s misery. Jesus would own stock in Blue Cross, I’m sure of it!”
1. The bill does not have single payer in it.
2. There is little to no competition now.
Felons in the US can’t get stimulus checks, can’t vote, can’t reside where a gun is present and some cannot live within 1000 feet of a school or a church. What classifications will be put on people to keep from having to pay their health care? No one has even had a chance to debate that little “detail,” yet, and there are hundreds of other details that Obama said “still need to be ironed out.” You can’t iron a garment that has not yet been made, folks. Would you buy a car or a house before it is even DESIGNED? The proverbial “pig in a poke” alert is SCREAMING, and people are saying “a few people just don’t want to help the poor,” or “we need to do this now.” DO WHAT?? Can anyone define what the H it is “they” want to do? If you can’t, then you can’t be for it, because you don’t know what it is. Not knowing is ignorance (which is not a dirty word, by the way); not knowing and being supportive of it is being an ignoramus.
actually, Medicaid requires proof of citizenship (birth cert, SSN) so there.
Beneifts are only provided from Emergency treatment at hospital in the ER! That means that the illegal is billed and if he cannot pay that would be turned over to uncompensated payments, where poor people have their bills coverer by a grant that is given to the hospital to cover such occurences. ER’s treat anyone in a life threatening situation which is a good thing! If the person is stable and can be moved they will do that instead of treating the person. I’m not an illegal but without ability to pay, I was not treated recently even though it was not a life threatening situation, so people are doing that instead of making a bill for the ER.
Not all of us opposed to rushing through this process blindly (which is what I have a problem with) oppose treating “illegal aliens” or any other human being. We send $Billions overseas to help people who would be “illegals” if they were here on our soil! Some of that money is taxes, other of it is charity we willingly gave because we felt it was the right thing to do. We fight for them, war for them and die for them. We try to help free them if they are oppressed, and we try to stop other countries who would take their freedeom (Korea, Vietnam, Somalia). I don’t give a damn if some of my tax or other money helps a little child who is sick, no matter where they are from. The same goes for his mom and dad, too. This should be a non-issue. Please help me kill it.
Anon. you are WRONG!! The Congressional Research Bureau states clearly that illegals will be treated like any other resident alien……. i.e., that they must provide suittable ID (like employers require) green card, SS card, proof of residency. etc………..
There are SO MANY LIES the GOP is spreading about this healthcare reform. Now, the people are getting are getting to see them. BTW, all this opposition to any Democrat is a matter of survival for the GOP! They MUST cripple the Obama administration and make gains in 2010 or they’ll remain a fringe party for a long time. Consequently, they will do ANYTHING TO ATTAIN THAT GOAL!
Treat the “illegals,” and anyone else who needs it. Just don’t take my freedom in the process. There. Dems and Repubs take notice, we have a compromise!!!
do you really think an illegal cannot get a fake id?? how are some many illegals working here in the us any way without fake ids?
and the DEMs have NOT voted down every GOP amendment……..
should we station guards at every hospital, clinic or office and frisk ppl when they come to see a doctor?
This fear and terror mongering has got to stop!
You don’t need to show your birth certificate for medicare,you just need to have a social security number so they can figure out your payments.