Immigration and Health Care - What Do We REALLY Want?

Well to be honest if I were in control this bill would not be passing. But that is just because I have a different idea on what needs to done to fix healthcare. It does need to be fixed...but so far I am not happy with the plans that our government has come up with. It has not gone up for a vote yet so there maybe time to fix it. But besides that....No illegals should not be able to get healthcare insurance in this country. They should not be able to get a job, they should not be able to rent a place to live. They are not US citizens. They are not covered under our constitution. THey dont have any rights. They are criminals. Maybe if we made it just about impossible for them to have a functional life here they would leave and go home and the rest of htem would stop coming here. And yes I am ok with making those hard decisions.

Hmm. I'm full of idealistic wonder. However, I'm not a policy maker and do not and could not fully know the exact details of every situation or of the unintended consequences of what I think is best, simply because it's not all about what I want and what I believe. The idea of "socialism/social justice" aside, this country, although supposedly placing an extremely strong emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility, isn't quite so grand as long as people are outright indigent. I'm a child of the 80s and don't know much about the day-to-day life of any period previous, especially centuries past when our Constitution was created. To that end, I do beleive, in a small sense, our founding papers are living, breathing, ammendable works that need to evolve and need to be interpreted within the boundaries of the context in order for government to effectively run the country. So when it comes to the government "providing" for the truly less fortunate among us, I'm not necessarily against that. What I'm against, however, is the government acting, basically, as a redistributive body. If government has power to take and give, common sense--logic!--suggests that they will do so by preference and not necessarily by need. When they talk about great change and fixing things and improving people's lives, this is where I truly and wholeheartedly believe that the more liberalist, progressive approach is fundamentally flawed at its very core. We have a whole hell of a lot in America that needs to be fixed. "Giving" to people is a failed idea, because, in order to "give" to one, you must take from another. My idea of "hope" and "change" is to work in reverse here, so to speak. Instead of going around the country, singling out the less fortunate and saying, "we will provide for you," an effective government could work to help people create more personal wealth. An effective government could work to do away with corruption and union interests and other special interests. An effective government doesn't need to spend $300,000 to create a job that pays $50,000. That's a collsasal amount of waste -- and I believe a lot of fraud as well. And this goes for government giving anyone an "option" of healthcare. Okay, so someone's life is saved. That's great news. But can we expect billions more in waste and fraud per year for this to happen? That's what I don't have the stomach for. Here's the way I see the whole immigrant/healthcare thing, as simplistic as it may be. (If someone has read my ranting to this point, I appreciate it ) Let's say that government FINALLY got its act together and cleaned up all the fraud and all the waste in Medicare/aid and other places where they're grossly negligent and outright criminal in their oversight and implementation. Let's say they also reigned in the greedy bloodsuckers in the private industry with IMPARTIAL regulations, and then opened up private insurance to compete nationwide, thus dropping the price of plans. These things are pretty big ifs, but if these two things happened, we're talking about billions upon billions of dollars in taxpayer money saved and spent in more effective ways, and also far cheaper policies so more could afford them and fairer private practices so more people could be covered. In this scenario, illegals receiving emergency room care or any type of care and subsequently not paying their bills isn't anywhere close to being a strain on our system. This would just have to be a consequence we stomach until, with improved immigration laws, we could register illegals and have them purchase private plans. Baby steps in problem solving. You don't enter a newborn into a marathon like we're doing now.

I do believe we need Health Care reform but not in the manner that is being proposed. On the immigration issue I think we should seal our BORDERS and take control of who comes and goes. Being realistic we can not deport the ones who are here now. What we should do is provide a system for them to become citizens. If they do not want to be citizens then we need to have some form of guest worker program where they have a job. The ones who want to become citizens must be working and self supporting and have a US Citizen who will sponsor them and take responsibility for them if they are unable to work. Anyone with a criminal record (other than immigration) should be deported. Only US Citizens should be eligible for Government benefits (welfare) and then that should be limited. It has been my experience that the vast majority of immigrants are hard working family people who are a positive for a community.

I'm with Lil when it comes to the illegal immigrants. I don't believe they should be entitled to anything because, yes, they are criminals and they are taking jobs away from Americans by undercutting our normal employment practices. They're not just picking fruit. I don't believe that anyone should be turned away from and ER...just have ICE show up. How hard is it to have your social security card and another form of ID with you if you're here legally? In all honesty, I don't believe that too many illegal immigrants would purchase their own insurance, even if it were dirt cheap, because that would defeat the purpose of living under the radar. None of them are going to readily admit on any form that they're here illegally, this is their name and this is their address.