Health negotiators focus on illegal immigrants

WASHINGTON – Health care negotiators in the Senate pressed for a way to ensure that illegal immigrants can't get access to government-funded insurance, a contentious issue now front and center after a Republican congressman's outburst during President Barack Obama's speech.

The issue is one of several thorny problems that came up as a small group of negotiators on the Senate Finance Committee met Friday morning. Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is aiming to finalize legislation on Obama's health overhaul by next week — though whether it's bipartisan or not remains to be seen.

Members of the group said they thought they'd settled the question of illegal immigration, but it came to the fore this week when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie" at Obama during his speech Wednesday. Obama had said illegal immigrants wouldn't be covered under his health plan.

Senators said that's forced the committee to work on provisions verifying legal status before an individual can get coverage.

"We've always been there, but we have to make sure to get the right process and language," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, one member of the so-called Gang of Six of three Republicans and three Democrats whom Baucus is leading.

Such verification can be tricky. Many Democrats fear that verification procedures keep legal residents from getting insurance, and in the House, they rejected Republican attempts to add verification requirements to the House health care bill.

The negotiators put off extensive discussion of the illegal immigration issue until Monday and said aides would be working on language on that and abortion over the weekend.

Friday's session focused largely on how an expansion of Medicaid would affect states, and on possible provisions to keep down medical malpractice costs.

The prognosis for bipartisan resolution remained cloudy, with Baucus prepared to go it alone even without Snowe and Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Enzi of Wyoming.

Snowe said she still couldn't predict whether they'd reach consensus — or whether Baucus would be able to count on her vote.

"I can't answer that at this point. We're working through all these issues and we'll see where it goes from there when we finalize everything," Snowe said.

The question could be answered as early as Monday when the group meets again.

"Obviously we'll find out who wants to support the (bill) and who doesn't," Baucus said. "I'm hopeful that there will be bipartisan support. And I'll keep working on it frankly over the weekend, on the telephone talking to people, so on and so forth."

Enzi declined to comment Friday and Grassley participated in the meeting by phone from Iowa.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090911/..._care_overhaul

Tough issue but we probably shouldn't be included simply to prevent the outrage and criticism from social conservatives in this time when we are in dire need of reform.

But in all honestly, shouldn't this be based on taxes for example? Realistically, if they have a record of you paying taxes then you should be allowed to obtain health insurance. However since the revenue generated from taxes by any single individual will most likely not be enough to cover all the costs the system will have to be subsidized by the government, I can see them being against it. However by that same principle it will be very hard for this social health care system to continue on a long-term basis, if the revenue generated won't be enough to cover all the costs.

It's funny...

There will always be someone who will try to violate the law and get whatever he or she wants. It's impossible to prevent a crime from happening 100%.
Further, every health care bill proposed in the Congress states it does not allow undocumented immigrants from benefiting from the bill. Puting some preventive measures as opponents want will cost more and might prevent some American citizens from accessing the system. Also, the notion that undocumented immigrants will hijack the health care system and cost billions of dollars is questionable.

Undocumented immigrants are not an important issue to be disscused in the health care debate. It's just a way (another example of "scare tactics") for health care reform opponents to damage and delay/prevent any bill in the Congress.

We don't want free healthcare; we want to be able to EARN status. We can buy our own health policy; thank you very much.

im very proud of all of us for being quite about this and saying "ok let people get covered, if we dont; its ok for now"... shows that we are not selfish and want everything...

cause if we were self-centered, we would've been like: "no one should vote for it IF we are not included, we HAVE to be included too"...

get what I mean?...

People like Senator Baucus need to grow a pair. He's essentially caving in to Joe Wilson even though he knows that there's no way in hell Republicans will ever vote for a health care reform bill; no matter how anti-immigrant it might be. It doesn't surprise me one bit though, since Baucus has been useless to our cause in the past. He might as well become a Republican.

On the other hand, I'm glad we have bona fide Democrats like House Speaker Pelosi who is ready to move forward on a resolution to officially admonish this wingnut who started it all.