Washington, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith issued the following statement in response to the Democrats’ latest healthcare bill, H.R. 3962. The legislation contains loopholes that will allow illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded benefits.
Ranking Member Smith: “It is disappointing that despite assurances by President Obama and promises by Senate Democrats, the latest version of the House healthcare bill still contains loopholes that will allow illegal immigrants to benefit under the plan. When will House Democrats listen to the American people? Taxpayers do not want to subsidize people who are here illegally.”
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About the immigration loopholes in HR 3962, the House Democratic health care bill:
Open Access to Insurance Exchange -- The bill contains no provisions to exclude illegal immigrants from participation in the federally-run Health Insurance Exchange or the “public option” (subsidized with two billion dollars of taxpayer funds).
As the Congressional Research Service (“CRS”) finds, the bill “contains no express restrictions on noncitizens – whether legally or illegally present . . . accessing and paying for coverage available through the health insurance exchange.”
Even President Obama and Democratic Senator Baucus reject this radical move and oppose participation by illegal immigrants.
No Reliable Verification Mechanism - The Democrats point to language in the House bill that says illegal immigrants cannot receive federal health insurance subsidies (“affordability credits”). However, in their first bill (H.R. 3200), the Democrats refused to add any verification provision to ensure that illegal immigrants not impersonate citizens and fraudulently receive subsidies. They even defeated amendments in two congressional committees to close this loophole. In H.R. 3962, they finally bowed to pressure from outraged constituents and added a verification provision. However, since they do not require applicants to provide identity documents, the system is vulnerable to illegal immigrants engaged in identity theft.
Family Eligibility for Affordability Credits - The bill provides that “members of the same family who are affordable credit eligible individuals shall be treated as a single affordable credit individual eligible for the applicable credit for such a family under this subtitle.” This suggests that if one member of a family is legally eligible, even illegal immigrant family members are considered eligible.
As CRS wrote about an identical provision in H.R. 3200, “[t]here could be instances where some family members would meet the definition of an eligible individual for purposes of the credit, while other family members would not. For example, in a family consisting of a U.S. citizen married to an unauthorized alien and a U.S. citizen child, the U.S. citizen spouse and child could meet the criteria for being a credit-eligible individual, while the unauthorized alien spouse would not meet the criteria. [The bill] does not expressly address how such a situation would be treated. Therefore, it appears that the Health Choices Commissioner would be responsible for determining how the credits would be administered in the case of mixed-status families.”
This could open the door for millions of illegal immigrants to receive subsidies.
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