Signal Boost: Dear GOP - You are killing people!

[genchaos]

Originally posted by acelightning at Signal Boost: Dear GOP - You are killing people!
Passed along from many people - original post by

Comments

Re: Sorry, not buying the Socialist Scam

[jhyanmar]

As for undocumented immigrants, please realize that most undocumented immigrants pay taxes. The aims of an undocumented immigrant are generally to continue their standard of living and avoid government attention. Indeed, many people believe that immigrant-supported tax rolls will make up for continuing crippling costs of the Bush tax cuts, to a certain extent. Since Laffer curve theories of increased government revenues for reduced taxation have utterly failed to produce results, it is likely that it will be the immigrants that will be supporting us, rather than the other way around.

In addition, those undocumented immigrants that do use other means than under-the-table or charity-based health care generally do so in the same manner as most poor people: the emergency room. Most of them do not receive employer sponsored healthcare at this time. This means that they (a) cost more than equivalents done through doctors and non-emergency care and (b) do not use preventative care, which would also reduce costs. Even if they weren't contributing via taxes, adding them to the system would almost certainly reduce our costs in the long run.

To top it off, no ACA provisions except for legal code changes will be applied to undocumented immigrants; this is already provided for both in the ACA and in existing law. In sum, they will probably be paying for it; if circumstances apply, it would make it cheaper for the rest of us, and they will be denied access wherever possible, even under inhumane and immoral conditions. To deny affordable healthcare to 300 million people because it might benefit 10 million who did not follow immigration procedures is mathematically madness in any event. I will take 30:1 odds.

Before you call something budget-busting, I suggest you look at the actual costs and savings of the bill, and the actual size of our budget. Currently, we are spending a lot on healthcare, but that is primarily in Medicare. As noted above, the ACA does not, in net, add to the deficit. We have many more pressing costs. The Bush tax cuts are one of the largest. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are another. Paying for Cold-war strategic technologies when we live in an era of asymmetrical warfare is yet more. Deferred maintenance on infrastructure is costing us hundreds of billions, especially in trade. Etc.

Tort reform and liability insurance have not been shown to be a large amount of healthcare costs, being less than 10-20%. Much more is spent by insurance companies on bureaucratic attempts to simply not pay doctors or pay for patients. It takes long and often costly fights with insurance companies to get paid in many situations, and numerous health organizations do not have the staff or spare money to fight, either bureaucratically, or in court.