I'm not a mooch fan but your point was precisely the point I was trying to make.
As for illegals I believe the more correct position should have been to organize Charities to help them and not let them be the burden to the American taxpayer.
Yes, definitely, the American taxpayer being burdened with health care for illegal aliens, either indirectly like it happens now with insured people subsidizing hospitals for their lost costs treating illegals in emergency rooms, or directly like these candidates are proposing, is preposterous.
Some people who don't know how healthcare works are under the mistaken impression that if elective care (non-emergency care, scheduled surgeries, treatment for chronic conditions and ongoing diseases) were covered, it would avoid conditions getting worse with more expensive trips to the emergency room when things explode; and hospitals would collect more money.
Sure, it would be good for hospitals... but not for the tax payer, for a very simple reason: the unintended consequence of people coming illegally to the United States just to get free healthcare. Medical tourism would be the norm. Anybody with some very expensive need - say, quadruple cardiac bypass surgery, brain surgery, cancer chemotherapy, organ transplant (care that is actually way more expensive than ER visits, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars or more) - from anywhere in the world would be able to simply get to the United States on a tourist visit, overstay it, and present to hospitals for free healthcare for illegals. Who would have to pay for it? The American taxpayer and the American insured population, of course! And also, Americans would have to compete with these foreigners for the surgical spots and so forth. Stupid plan, and very unpopular. If the Dems keep proposing this kind of stupidity, they will lose the election.
Yes, charities, sure, why not?
But government-sponsored free elective care for illegals? That's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Just think of it. Why would we, American taxpayers, be willing to pay for, say, $600,000 worth of cancer chemotherapy for some guy from Belarus who overstayed his visa just for this reason?
Foreigner: "I'm very sick. I need very expensive care that I can't afford. Oh, I know what to do: I'll just go to the United States, become an illegal immigrant there, and they'll treat me for free."
Yeah, right.
Emergency room care is a humanitarian issue. I hate it that our hospitals get burdened with this, but it's at least understandable that if a human being is in real trouble and is about to die if not helped, we'll help him regardless of legal status and ability to pay. But elective treatments? That's pushing it way too far.
Anyway, for emergency room care, there should be a way to bill the illegal alien's country for the care provided.
