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How to Get Free Health: Come to the USA, Have Babies
The Bush Administration announced today that it would permit states to extend subsidized health insurance to pregnant immigrants by classifying their unborn children as eligible for enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The abortion lobby is howling, of course. And I suppose the wing of the Republican Party that is sometimes mistaken for a pro-life movement is writing mash notes to the President. If there were adult supervision in Washington, DC someone might point out that it’s probably not such a good idea to undermine the 1996 welfare reforms aimed at denying benefits to immigrants. Isn’t the presence of a significant number of immigrants having babies they cannot afford a pretty good indicator that our immigration system is broken? Do we really want to encourage more of this by paying for it? Posted by at September 27, 2002 04:44 PM | Send Comments
This is a classic example of Republicans’ inability to get anything fully right, and of the extent to which GW Bush and his party’s leadership are under the sway of Karl Rove and Hispanic pressure groups. In acknowledging the humanity of the unborn child, they get something of fundamental importance right (!). Typically, it comes at the price of pandering that undermines welfare reform and makes this country, already incapable of coping with mass immigration, even more of a magnet for indigent foreigners who come and stay (illegally and legally) than it already is. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on September 30, 2002 10:47 AM |