It appears that while Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S. C. was yelling "liar" at President Obama, someone should have been yelling "hypocrite" at him.
Open Congress notes that in 2003 Wilson voted for a plan that used taxpayer money to provide healthcare for illegal aliens:
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.
4 comments:
I’ve noticed a new favorite (false) argument being used ad nauseam by the left, it goes like this: “you can’t be against socialized medicine for everyone if you support (VA hospitals / Medicare / Medicaid).
By that logic, Randy, you are a hypocrite for saying you are for freedom of speech and yet restrict unmoderated posting to prevent slander. Here’s another one, you cannot oppose a despotic police state if you support having some police and prisons.
Most reasonable people are capable of drawing lines, whereas extremist take the view that if we provide some emergency care to undocumented alien then we have to provide all medical care to such persons. Along the same lines, it is not hypocrisy for someone to support a plan to compensate hospitals for providing emergency care (care that they were lawfully required to provide), while opposing extending such compensation to non-emergency situations. Consider this, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 only appropriated $1 billion over fiscal years 2005through 2008 for payments to hospitals and other eligible providers of emergency medical services delivered to undocumented and certain other aliens. However, President’s Obama’s “plan” (which is really no plan, rather we are arguing over a house bill) would cost $1 trillion according to the CBO.
Hypocrisy is when someone condemns one thing in public while doing that exact same thing in secret. It is not hypocrisy to say that it is okay to provide emergency care to undocumented aliens but not okay to provide them everything else, especially when the first costs 1/100th of the second. Rather, it is a reasonable line to draw.
Also, I think it is disingenuous for folks on the left talk about this bill reducing cost when the CBO has said it will do the opposite. See: http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/16/news/economy/health_care_reform/index.htm?postversion=2009071616
Rep. Joe Wilson represents a hard core of white supremacists who know that white supremacy is kaput and are resorting to shouting down anybody trying to engage in a reasoned debate vis a vis Mexican immigrants or anything else. The U.S.-Mexico problem was started by the U.S. back in 1848 when it took half of Mexico's territory for its nakedly white supremacist whites-only homeland, leaving sawed-off runt Mexico eternally dependent on the U.S., with no lebensraum for future pop. growth. 160 years later, and the chickens are coming home to roost.
It's Pres. Obama's turn to do the shouting, starting with calling the game and asking Congress to invite the people of Mexico to finally join the U.S. as the "51st state" (10+ states) sans racism, after which all 414M Americans can finally accept each others' existence and work together to solve health care, economic, security and other concerns.
Click http://go.to/megamerge to read my Megamerge Dissolution Solution proposal showing why and how it can be done.
As far as I’m concerned Mexico can have California back but they have to agree to take the New England states also.
I'm not sure that accusing Mr. Wilson of being a white supremicist was where the author was going with this, but I believe that Mr. Wilson's position was based more upon the difference between 1 billion and 1 trillion, and what impact that woul have on his constituents and others. The bigger issue is obviously, how do you legalise more of these folks and allow them to contribute to paying for healthcare if they become US taxpayers. If they fall below that level of reportable income, they would be treated just as anyone else. Giving illegals a blank slate when it comes to healthcare or admission to a state supported college (as we do here in NC), is certainly a prejudice against 'citizens' of all means and origin.
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