Illegal Aliens Get Taxpayer-Financed Care, Thanks to Obamacare

ACA promises are clearly broken

One of the key provisions of Obamacare was that illegal aliens would not receive free health care, although many illegals previously used the emergency room as their primary care physician and never paid a dime. That is because emergency rooms cannot turn away patients, and illegals were difficult to track. But Obamacare passed, in part, because of the assurance that the program was designed only for citizens and green card holders. The math gets a bit tricky, but because payments from the federal government are fungible, federal payments are clearly subsidizing health care expenditures for illegals.

Let me be clear: Obamacare contains an explicit prohibition against providing federally-subsidized coverage to immigrants who cannot prove they are here legally. I am not arguing, nor did Louise Radnofsky demonstrate in her story, that anyone is explicitly violating this prohibition [1]. But no honest person can deny that because of Obamacare, more taxpayer resources at the state and local level are being spent on health care of illegal immigrants than would have been spent otherwise [2].

This is a matter of simple arithmetic. Forty-nine states have balanced budget requirements. Thus, at the margin, every $1 dollar reduction in taxpayer-financed uncompensated care costs for the uninsured frees up a dollar that can be spent on health care for illegal immigrants. In that sense, the legal prohibition against using Obamacare funds to explicitly bankroll health care for illegal immigrants is largely irrelevant. The federal Obamacare subsidies undeniably permit states and localities to make expenditures on health care for illegal immigrants that they otherwise would be unable to afford

I leave it to readers to decide whether this is a good thing or bad thing. But we should have no doubt that this is one of the unavoidable outcomes of Obamacare and a perfectly reasonable factor to consider in deciding whether one concludes that the law should be supported or opposed.  It is just one of many reasons why I believe a nation of 320 million people is much better off letting such resource allocation decisions be made at the state and local level rather than by federal taxpayers. That way people can vote with their feet if they don’t like the idea of their tax dollars being used to pay for people who have come to this nation illegally.

When one party exploits a very temporary super-majority to enact sweeping legislation on a strict party-line vote that culminates in outcomes strongly opposed by a majority of Americans, it should be little wonder our politics have become so contentious in recent years.  The disturbing rise of Donald Trump cannot be laid at the feet of Obamacare alone, but the egregious manner in which Obamacare was enacted and has been too-often-lawlessly implemented certainly is an important illustration of why so many Americans feel that their elected representatives are simply not listening to them. It’s sad to think so many millions of Americans have consequently concluded we need to elect a high-school bully to fight back.

Not one Republican congressman voted for the ACA. A wide majority of citizens disapproved of it. And Democrats like Nancy Polosi admitted they did not even know what was in the bill. So why was it passed? Certainly to give the federal government control over this huge segment of the economy. Probably to gain access to millions of personal records from the populace. And also to poke the Republicans in the eye and show them who was in control.

The citizens of the U.S. should be outraged. And as the author points out, much of Donald Trumps popularity seems to be founded in the anger common citizens feel towards an out-of-control, dictatorial government that is heaping debt on the backs of the American people and showing much more interest in the welfare of illegals and big business than in the people who keep the wheels of America turning. All this compliments of President Barack Obama and the Democrat party, may they be buried in the coming election.

Source: forbes.com

Photo: ItAintHolyWater