Title: Undocumented Shouldn't Mean Uninsured - CBS News
Headings: Undocumented Shouldn't Mean Uninsured
Undocumented Shouldn't Mean Uninsured
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Content: As a result, doctors such as Ludmir are likely to continue to see undocumented immigrants when their medical situation is most dire - and costly to society. This isn't the first time that the combination of Republican hostility and Democratic timidity on the immigration issue has adversely shaped policy. In 1996, as part of welfare reform, Republicans insisted on banning legal immigrants from receiving Medicaid and S-CHIP (which assists families that make too much to qualify for Medicaid) for the first five years of their residencies. President Clinton grudgingly agreed to the provision in order to shepherd the welfare-reform bill through Congress. Trending News
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Soft Power and Hard Power
The Republican argument that cheap public health care was attracting impoverished illegal immigrants into the country has since been called into question: In 2000, a study from Health Affairs found that less than 1 percent of undocumented immigrants "cited obtaining social services as the most important reason for immigrating." But, although its foundation has rotted, the policy still stands, setting the tone of the current debate: If we don't provide publicly funded health care even to some legal immigrants, why extend it to illegal ones? There are currently 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States - the majority of whom are uninsured. Among all immigrants, both documented and undocumented, less than 40 percent receive employer-sponsored coverage.