Illegal immigrants cost Massachusetts taxpayers $38 million a year under RomneyCare, is this to be expected under ObamaCare?
When the healthcare reform bill was being debated in the Congress it was said that Massachusetts’ healthcare system–which mandates that all residents buy healthcare insurance–was the model that the national bill was based on. If this is true than I think it is fair to look at how effective the Massachusetts law has been in order to predict or determine how the national bill law will perform.
To do this I would like to juxtapose two stories that have been in the news in Massachusetts recently. The first story comes from the Boston Herald and it is about how much the taxpaying residents of Massachusetts are paying to provide healthcare benefits to illegal aliens. According to a report that was grudgingly released by the Deval Patrick regime, illegal aliens have cost the taxpayers of Massachusetts nearly $37 million this year alone!
These illegal aliens are enrolled in a program called MassHealth Limited at taxpayer expense, this is not a case of illegal aliens receiving free healthcare because they use the emergency room as a doctor’s office for routine visits as we are told is so often the case. The costs of the emergency room visits of illegal aliens were not included in this report; emergency room visits cost the taxpayers of Massachusetts an additional $2 million.
One of the arguments used for allowing illegal immigrants access to healthcare benefits was the fact that taxpayers are paying for the healthcare of illegals because of the way they use the emergency room, so in the long run it would be cheaper. But let me ask you this: what difference does it make whether the taxpayers pay for emergency room visits or for the illegal immigrants’ healthcare? There is no difference because the taxpayers in Massachusetts are the ones getting screwed either way. These illegals are not paying for their own insurance, it is being given to them–that is not what the original intent of the law was according to the bill of goods the taxpayers were sold. The report states that nearly 70% of the people who are enrolled in the MassHealth Limited plan are in fact illegal aliens, how is the burden of the taxpayer supposed to be reduced with such a large number of illegals still getting free healthcare, albeit from taxpayer funded insurance rather than from taxpayer funded emergency room visits?
So while illegal immigrants are now receiving free healthcare at the expense of the taxpayer, how are the actual taxpayers of Massachusetts making out under RomneyCare? Not so good, here we move on to the story of Mike Merlina.
Mike Merlina is a taxpaying resident of Massachusetts who works for a small family business which cannot afford to pay its employees healthcare benefits, so Mr. Merlina received his healthcare benefits from his wife through her employer. That is up until the time that she was laid off. Now Mike Melina has no healthcare insurance and he cannot afford to buy healthcare insurance so he has gone without–not because he doesn’t want insurance, he does, and not through any fault of his own. His wife no longer has a job and he is struggling to make ends meet without the extra burden of the state telling him he must buy something that he cannot afford.
Massachusetts hit Mike Melina with a $2,000 fine for not having healthcare insurance–a fine that he cannot afford to pay either. So while illegal immigrants are pampered with free healthcare insurance that Mr. Melina is helping to provide through his tax dollars, the state is unwilling to help him–all of the plans that Mike can afford are not approved by the state as “adequate”–and he has been forced to challenge the Massachusetts law in court. But while this challenge is ongoing, Mike Melina is incurring further taxes, fines, and penalties in addition to the original $2,000.
Mike Melina is in a tight spot here, while he cannot even afford a lawyer and is relegated to defending himself, the state of Massachusetts has hired a law firm–at taxpayer (and Mike Melina’s) expense–to defend the state mandates on healthcare reform.
There is something drastically wrong with a law that punishes hard working, taxpaying Americans while at the same time rewarding illegal immigrants; whether they are hard working immigrants or not is irrelevant because the fact still remains that they are being given something that is unavailable to the legal residents of Massachusetts. How many other Massachusetts residents are in the same boat as Mike Melina? I think it is safe to assume that not only is he not alone, he has plenty of company. He was just the first to stand up against the state, there will be more I am sure.
If Massachusetts can be seen as an example of what we can expect to see on a national level there are many pitfalls that we will need to overcome. Massachusetts paints a bleak picture of what healthcare is going to be like once ObamaCare is fully implemented. There is no doubt that ObamaCare must first be defunded and then repealed.
Mitt Romney is widely seen as a frontrunner in the Republican party in 2012, RomneyCare and ObamaCare are closely aligned, and while Mitt Romney continues to claim that his plan was good and blames all of the problems of Massachusetts’ plan on the current governor, the fact remains that he instituted the plan that ObamaCare was based on and this alone should disqualify him from the Republican nomination.
America's Watchtower 
Concerning Mitt Romney, I hope a lot of people remember his role in Massachusetts’ health care plan before they go blindly to the polls and vote for him because he is the “front runner”.
About the health care reform legislation, this thing is going to have some far reaching consequences, some of which may take a while to show up. Hopefully, we can nip these consequences in the bud.
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I think that ObamaCare has killed any chance that Mitt Romney had of winning the nomination, he will be forever tied to this.
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Under ObamaCare? Probably even more… Federal inflation being what it is and all… 😕
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Probably MORE… 😕
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Now that is a scary thought!
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Romney was never a consideration in my mind, for that very reason.
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I thought that Romney would have been a good candidate to fix the economy, but I always had in the back of my mind the fact that he unleashed RomneyCare on Ma. in the days before he left office.
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THIS IS SENATOR HARRY REID’S, BOXER & BROWNS ULTIMATUM TO THE TAXPAYERS OF AMERICA. MASS AMNESTY!
All I know about Senator Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and generally–ALL–Liberal Democrats are that they are genuflecting to illegal aliens and an Liberal-Dem Incumbent returns means Amnesty for the 13 to 20 million living here. Reid has affirmed that in the Lame Duck session of the Senate he will pass this abhorrent Amnesty to criminals. What remains is the silence, about the cost of $2.6 Trillion dollars (Heritage Foundation), to make it comfortable for illegal aliens which will come out of taxpayers’ pockets; added to the 13. 5 Trillion Federal Debt we already have accumulated. The far left progressives have already voted for the illegal invasion and to extend our Social Security to them, even the ones who never paid into the system (May 2007) GOOGLE—On The Issues website. WE ARE DIGGING OUR OWN FINANCIAL GRAVES WITH REID IN SENATE AND BOXER.
Under another reign of the Liberal Democrats, America might just as well open the border gates wide; demolish the half-completed fence between our Southern border and the other side. Then have Senator Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Russell Feingold, Jerry Brown, standing at each entrance handing out maps, welfare chits, a brand new Social security cards, a drivers’ license and about $600 dollars of taxpayer money. Hey! Reid says we can take more foreigners into our midst, as we only have 15 million citizens and legal residents, looking for a job, while 8.6 illegal nationals are gainfully employed. Have every Democrats lackey stand outside each border hospital and proffer to every pregnant woman, who reached America a brand new birth certificate, for the potential instant citizenship baby, a check for the public benefit line and a signup sheet for low income Section 8 housing—so the whole family can join them.
Additionally, for every child they now have from now on, food stamps, cash payments and a medicade card for future pregnancies. The wives can churn out more children to become immediate citizens and swell our schools to overload, where nobody is learning because the teachers have to first contend with children, where English is a second language. In California where 18.9 percent of the kids drop-out of high school, because many teachers don’t comprehend English, as they have been recruited from South of the border. Democrats could lay-off the US Border patrol, the DEA, ICE and other policing authorities, so that the uneducated, those carrying contagious diseases, the destitute and other foreign peons could take the jobs of our own impoverished workforce.
Maybe the Catholic Church and other religious groups will take the illegal nationals into their homes, feed them. Perhaps we should place notices in every barrio, ghetto around the world and have these nonsensically politicians procure military aircraft, to fly in every foreign national, every criminal and terrorist into our nation. Have fleets of buses waiting to transport them, to every corner of America, with stop-offs at hospitals for the sick, mentally handicapped and old. We should have ambulances waiting at the border or airport terminals, to drive those individual who must get immediate dialysis, prescription drugs or a major surgery. With the Obama’s new medical care reform most of these special issues will be recognized, as illegal aliens will have no insurance or any ability to pay for physician’s treatment.
They walk away completely free of paying and once again the taxpayer-patsy will get the bill, while citizens will be chased down by obnoxious debt collectors. Taxpayers can foot the bill as they have always done and my guess always will, unless these corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle in Washington actually work for the American people. That’s why THE PEOPLE’S TEA PARTY has risen in a revolution, to halt the corruption and greed of both parties. GOOGLE—NumbersUSA website and Judicial Watch and learn about the deep seated corruption Google—Illegal alien costs and read highly regarded reports from unbiased sources.
If we vote back the hidden Liberals, it will be self inflicted wounds. Attention should be drawn to illegal aliens voting, as Senator Reid’s is there only real chance of the passage of—AMNESTY.
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The illegals hate white American woman but they love the American men. For their money as alot of illegals are hookers. They love Boston as they get state benefits and when their knocked up w 10 kids they get free housing, ins, food stamps, wic, ect.. While their boyfriends live w them, deal drugs ( tons of cash) no taxes, and get cash from their ( customers) so it’s time to be like.Arizona and yes racially profile them
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I think everyone who pays the high taxes of Massachusetts of which almost 65% is going to healthcare coverage – needs to make a mass exit out of the state. Certainly people who want to retire can no longer afford to retire in MA. One doctor told me he thinks that some of his patients just fly from other countries to get the free healthcare – no one checks if the person really lives here. The person can get glasses, have their teeth fixed or have an operation courtesy of the taxpayers. No one requires the person to purchase healhcare when they enter the US.
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