Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Social Security Solution
Jody posted in the comments to my post on sheetrock-hanging undocumented below that one problem with illegal immigrants is that "Illegals inflate tax rates by being a part of the black economy while consuming government services like right there in L.A." I'll include his link to a Fox news piece, too. A few comments:
If we really want to "fix" social security, maybe we should open the borders.
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- The Fox News piece is a case study in why I don't read Fox News. It has the classic "Some say," which is the Fox News turnaround for editorializing. In this article, the sentence reads: "But some critics say the taxpayers can't be the HMO to the world." It's unattributed, but I think you'd have to describe that sentence as coming from, well, a particular worldview.
- LA's public health system is in trouble, no doubt about it. But as the Fox News story says:
Sixty percent of the county's uninsured patients are not U.S. citizens. More than half are here illegally. About 2 million undocumented aliens in Los Angeles County alone are crowding emergency rooms because they can't afford to see a doctor.
So that's 30% of the county's uninsured. Which means, if my math is right, we've got 4.6 million people either here legally or American citizens who don't have insurance. Would it be easier to hunt down the illegals or try to find a way to insure the 4.6 million citizens who are registered with the government? Even if it were harder to find these legitimate people, wouldn't it be better to try to find ways to get them out of the emergency rooms? There are more of them, after all. And they're playing by the rules.
- The guy they quote with the handicapped son: he doesn't have insurance. He can't get care for a learning disability (therapy, presumably, exactly the kind of care that costs less in the long run than letting the kid wait until he has a real emergency.) Well, guess what. Illegal immigrants can't get care for a learning disability either. If a vaporizing ray hit all of the illegal immigrants tomorrow, that guy would have the same problem. Again, is the problem illegal immigrants, or is the problem the uninsured?
- Speaking of quotes, don't get me started on "Yolanda Hernandez," the greedy illegal. I don't think she had time to consider her statements, because she was late for a cadillac race with Ronald Reagan's Welfare Queen.
- Barring the existence of a vaporizing ray, what would Fox news suggest Los Angeles do about the strains on the public health system? Start denying people care in the emergency room? Hospitals can't do that; that's what they're there for. Would Fox (or Jody) prefer that emergency rooms deny urgent care without cash or insurance? If I have a gunshot wound I'm not going to be much help finding my Kaiser Permanente card, and I have insurance. There's no solution for this without dramatically changing the way hospitals work in ways that are detrimental to everyone.
If we really want to "fix" social security, maybe we should open the borders.
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