Illinois becomes 1st State to Give Medicaid to Undocumented

[Shrillland]

That's not the name. It's the ISSR(Illinois Soviet Socialist Republic). How else could our state be mostly governed by decrepit old left-wingers who still run things even though they should've gone to pasture at least 20 years ago?

Huh I thought it was Madigan’s House of Horrors

That's the nickname, yes, but ISSR is the official title. All we really need is Cermak's Tomb to be spruced up and we're set for the old-fashioned parades and demonstrations.

[Agarntrop]

I support this in principle, but it could have unwanted implications.

[Thasse]

I support this in principle, but it could have unwanted implications.

I can't see any "unwanted" implications to giving more people healthcare. Especially with a deadly virus spreading in the US.

[Agarntrop]

I support this in principle, but it could have unwanted implications.

I can't see any "unwanted" implications to giving more people healthcare. Especially with a deadly virus spreading in the US.

ever heard of health tourism?

[Thasse]

ever heard of health tourism?

Yes, and I don't see anything wrong with it. Everyone deserves medical treatment; if they can't get that care in their country, then it only makes sense for them to go elsewhere.

[Rusozak]

I support this in principle, but it could have unwanted implications.

I can't see any "unwanted" implications to giving more people healthcare. Especially with a deadly virus spreading in the US.

The problem is the state is already broke as hell. A consequence I could see is a total collapse of Illinois as resources dry up and then nobody gets anything. Free healthcare for all is good and all, but there's an issue of finite resources at play here.

[Hakons]

Everyone should have access to decent healthcare. Illegal immigrants are obviously human and are included under "everyone." Illinois is already in dire financial straits, but this doesn't seem to add much to it.

[Snakeden]

As an aside, what would normally happen in a US hospital if an illegal immigrant turned up with serious medical issues? Would they receive treatment and have a debt they could never repay, or would it just be a write-off for the hospital and they'd treat them anyway, or would they be turned away?

If you don't have health insurance, you aren't guaranteed treatment. You're guaranteed stabilization. They're only obligated to make sure you can leave the hospital alive. They don't have to care why you're there, or help you find out, or help you treat it long-term. Went to the ER on two separate occasions for things that had been causing me big problems, but since they couldn't figure out the sources real fast, they sent me out as soon as I was stable enough to go each time. You only get actual care from a GP, and if you can't get one, sucks to be you. Hope the next event you're in the ER for isn't fatal enough to stop you this time.

Even if you luck out and find a low-income clinic, you have to be able to provide things like bank statements, social security cards, licenses, etc., and you have to hope they're accepting new patients at the time. Qualifying is also not a promise of good care. I was with one for a year, and the entire time, I fought to have my badly mangled and incomplete medical chart corrected, to no avail. Could barely keep up with affording the small fees for the clinic appointments, but they referred me to external places costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars and then treated me like an uncooperative patient because I hadn't gotten those things done before the next month's appointment. Went through three of their mental health docs in that time because one left after getting her required amount of practice and the second decided he would no longer offer telehealth services to the clinic it already took me 90 minutes or 30 bucks to reach. Second mental health doc's response to my suspicion of an eating disorder was that I could Google support groups to talk to about it.

ERs also don't give you medicines for anything not directly related to what you went in for. When asked about medicines being taken, I've told ER doctors I lacked a GP or active prescription for something else going untreated; they gave neither exam nor prescription. The GP, when I did have one, only gave me an emergency medicine and not the preventative ones. It took horrible open sobbing to be taken seriously about other issues and I was again sent somewhere super expensive as a solution.

Now consider that I'm a US citizen. There's next to no damn way someone who isn't documented and can't get insurance is getting any better a treatment than I did out of the system. They may even get worse treatment, since there's risk of racism, political, or language barrier issues involved.

As far as I'm concerned, Illinois is doing right by people with this move.

Edit: Cleaned up some emotional content, some personal health details, etc.

[James_xenoland]

Toon era indeed.

Or we could save a lot more money by, you know, making sure the only people living here are supposed to be here in the first place! We do have laws about who/when/how someone immigrates here, and systems in place to officially change law by LEGAL official means! Just because some groups don't like it, and others are trying to buy votes, doesn't mean they have the legal, ethical or moral right to ignore the rule of law. What gives these pompous fools the idea that they are outside and free from rule of law in the first place? This is always my question every time some nitwit/ideologue fails to differentiate between immigrants and illegal aliens. Especially if playing the race card while doing so.

[Bear Stearns]

fuck this gay state

[Aureumterra]

That’s ridiculous

[Galloism]

Everyone should have access to decent healthcare. Illegal immigrants are obviously human and are included under "everyone." Illinois is already in dire financial straits, but this doesn't seem to add much to it.

Knowing the IL dept of revenue, they’ll probably make them declare their income to qualify for Medicaid (it’s a need based program), then send them a tax bill based on it.

[Nevertopia]

Everyone should have access to decent healthcare. Illegal immigrants are obviously human and are included under "everyone." Illinois is already in dire financial straits, but this doesn't seem to add much to it.

Knowing the IL dept of revenue, they’ll probably make them declare their income to qualify for Medicaid (it’s a need based program), then send them a tax bill based on it.

that sounds way too smart and efficient. Probably wont happen.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

As easy as it seems to believe that, they were made a couple of weeks ago. Technically, this was just tacked on to the special adjusted budget that was proposed in the face of Covid.

Obviously we should treat people who have COVID-19, irrespective of whether they're illegal immigrants or not. But we shouldn't pretend it'll magically cost 1% of the price tag. That's my biggest issue with the bill - the numbers are likely made up. It's the same in California with the idiotic high speed rail, where they just made up bullshit numbers to fool the people into supporting it, and now they cannot fund it, and quite a few of us want to end the project.

If Illinois said "we need $2 billion to treat the elderly who have COVID-19 across the state, and we hope the Federal Government provides the funds because we are financially screwed, with at least $50 million going to treat illegal immigrants over 65" - I'd be fine with that. But claiming that you can fund someone's yearly healthcare insurance with $100 if they're actually over 65... it's bullshit, and that's my main issue. Let's have a real debate, with real numbers, on real policies. We desperately need that in all corners of the US, and yes, healthcare should be a major topic.

The $2 million is being taken out of context. I don't think you should even blame Ramirez, rather you should blame the source.

The expansion was a big win for the Legislative Latino Caucus, which Ramirez took lead on the effort through the health and human services working group leading up to the special session. She said the coverage will save the state money in the long run, costing about $2 million, which in her opinion, “is nothing to a $2 billion Medicaid bill.”

She said it’s about three times cheaper to cover undocumented seniors than it is to not cover them and then “have them in a hospital when they’re already dying and are in stage three of cancer and other things because they didn’t show up until they tested positive with coronavirus and then all these other things they had also came to light and became too late to prevent.”

She didn't say it would cost $2 million to cover the illegal seniors, but $2 million net. $2 million MORE than waiting for their illnesses to become terminal and then having to treat them. I guess the latter would have to go on the Medicaid bill?

It could really use some detailed modelling. Estimating how many old non-citizens have untreated disease is difficult just to start with, so estimating their future needs is even harder. And that begs another question: is now really a good time to be spending to save future spending?

There are plenty of issues with the provision being in the Illinois budget, but you've gone off half-cocked on the $2 million figure.

[Shofercia]

Obviously we should treat people who have COVID-19, irrespective of whether they're illegal immigrants or not. But we shouldn't pretend it'll magically cost 1% of the price tag. That's my biggest issue with the bill - the numbers are likely made up. It's the same in California with the idiotic high speed rail, where they just made up bullshit numbers to fool the people into supporting it, and now they cannot fund it, and quite a few of us want to end the project.

If Illinois said "we need $2 billion to treat the elderly who have COVID-19 across the state, and we hope the Federal Government provides the funds because we are financially screwed, with at least $50 million going to treat illegal immigrants over 65" - I'd be fine with that. But claiming that you can fund someone's yearly healthcare insurance with $100 if they're actually over 65... it's bullshit, and that's my main issue. Let's have a real debate, with real numbers, on real policies. We desperately need that in all corners of the US, and yes, healthcare should be a major topic.

The $2 million is being taken out of context. I don't think you should even blame Ramirez, rather you should blame the source.

The expansion was a big win for the Legislative Latino Caucus, which Ramirez took lead on the effort through the health and human services working group leading up to the special session. She said the coverage will save the state money in the long run, costing about $2 million, which in her opinion, “is nothing to a $2 billion Medicaid bill.”

She said it’s about three times cheaper to cover undocumented seniors than it is to not cover them and then “have them in a hospital when they’re already dying and are in stage three of cancer and other things because they didn’t show up until they tested positive with coronavirus and then all these other things they had also came to light and became too late to prevent.”

She didn't say it would cost $2 million to cover the illegal seniors, but $2 million net. $2 million MORE than waiting for their illnesses to become terminal and then having to treat them. I guess the latter would have to go on the Medicaid bill?

It could really use some detailed modelling. Estimating how many old non-citizens have untreated disease is difficult just to start with, so estimating their future needs is even harder. And that begs another question: is now really a good time to be spending to save future spending?

There are plenty of issues with the provision being in the Illinois budget, but you've gone off half-cocked on the $2 million figure.

That's even worse. Considering that they don't know how many illegal immigrant seniors there are in Illinois, what kind of illnesses they have, what the rate of incoming illegal immigrant seniors is going to be, whether or not the children of illegal immigrants are developing into productive taxpayers who'll stay in Illinois, (remember this is a state program, not a federal one,) whether or not this will increase the emigration from Illinois based on perception alone, whether or not this will cause an influx of illegal immigrant seniors into Illinois, etc, etc, etc, that number sounds more and more like it's made up.

It'll cost $2 million? Bwhahahaha! Good one. According to Pew Research data, https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/in ... -by-state/ there are 400,000 illegal immigrants in Illinois. Let's say that only 10% of them are over 65, and only half of those are living in poverty, let's go extreme. That's still 20,000 people. So $2 mil divided by that amount, that's $100 in healthcare per year? Bwhahahaha! Good one Illinois officials, you do you and keep on being the laughing stock of the US. According to the World Bank, the United States spends $10,250 per person, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD but Illinois is only spending 1% of that. It's a miracle!

Joking aside, we should have a debate about healthcare in the US, but we should use real numbers, not the joke that Illinois provided. Considering that Illinois sucks, as is evident by it being one of the few states with a negative migration rate in the US, others include West Virginia, Vermont, and Connecticut, is it really smart to spend money like this? The taxpayer base is shrinking, and we're about to go through a major economic crisis, and Illinois has one of the most moronic pension systems out there, is it smart to make wild assumptions that undervalue the expenditure necessary for the program?

Illinois is too far gone to be saved, but advocates against universal healthcare will point to Illinois and say "see, it failed in Illinois, why do we want it? It's a piss poor program!" whereas the real reason it failed, is because Illinois' administration are dum-dums, not because it's a bad program, so in essence, Illinois is screwing it up for the rest of us. Can Indiana invade?

I propose that we split Illinois between Indiana, Missouri, and Michigan

Being conquered by Detroit. Ouch! At least they'll get a rap song out of it.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

The $2 million is being taken out of context. I don't think you should even blame Ramirez, rather you should blame the source.

The expansion was a big win for the Legislative Latino Caucus, which Ramirez took lead on the effort through the health and human services working group leading up to the special session. She said the coverage will save the state money in the long run, costing about $2 million, which in her opinion, “is nothing to a $2 billion Medicaid bill.”

She said it’s about three times cheaper to cover undocumented seniors than it is to not cover them and then “have them in a hospital when they’re already dying and are in stage three of cancer and other things because they didn’t show up until they tested positive with coronavirus and then all these other things they had also came to light and became too late to prevent.”

She didn't say it would cost $2 million to cover the illegal seniors, but $2 million net. $2 million MORE than waiting for their illnesses to become terminal and then having to treat them. I guess the latter would have to go on the Medicaid bill?

It could really use some detailed modelling. Estimating how many old non-citizens have untreated disease is difficult just to start with, so estimating their future needs is even harder. And that begs another question: is now really a good time to be spending to save future spending?

There are plenty of issues with the provision being in the Illinois budget, but you've gone off half-cocked on the $2 million figure.

That's even worse. Considering that they don't know how many illegal immigrant seniors there are in Illinois, what kind of illnesses they have, what the rate of incoming illegal immigrant seniors is going to be, whether or not the children of illegal immigrants are developing into productive taxpayers who'll stay in Illinois, (remember this is a state program, not a federal one,) whether or not this will increase the emigration from Illinois based on perception alone, whether or not this will cause an influx of illegal immigrant seniors into Illinois, etc, etc, etc, that number sounds more and more like it's made up.

Yes. Politician gets amendment in budget using made-up figures.

Except I haven't actually checked that. For all I know she might have had modelling and she might have handed out printed copies before giving the speech proposing the amendment. If it wasn't reported in that article then I don't know it.

Just be honest and admit that you don't know either. You're attacking the figures because you don't like the principle, and assuming there are no better figures because ... you haven't looked for them. OK?

[Panslavicland]

I'm all for government schemes that encourage illegal immigrants to register their personal info in a database, so long as ICE has access to it as well. Do it this way and it could save a lot more than these lawmakers think it would

[Qabea]

Healthcare should be a right among American citizens. Giving illegals benefits after breaking the law is absurd.

[The Republic of Fore]

Yeah no, Medicaid should only cover US citizens.

[The Federal Government of Iowa]

This is ridiculous. Just another liberal scheme to get illegals to vote Democrat.

[Page]

Yeah no, Medicaid should only cover US citizens.

Health insurance shouldn't exist at all, we should have a national system but as things are right now, undocumented immigrants pay taxes so they should reap the benefits. Otherwise, the taxation is theft. The same applies to citizens too. It's bullshit that a person pays taxes that the government could use to provide them health care, but the government doesn't and then that person has to pay for private insurance.

[The Federal Government of Iowa]

Yeah no, Medicaid should only cover US citizens.

Health insurance shouldn't exist at all, we should have a national system but as things are right now, undocumented immigrants pay taxes so they should reap the benefits. Otherwise, the taxation is theft. The same applies to citizens too. It's bullshit that a person pays taxes that the government could use to provide them health care, but the government doesn't and then that person has to pay for private insurance.

So don't pay for your healthcare through taxes. Then you don't tax those who are illegal for services they aren't going to use.

[The Republic of Fore]

Yeah no, Medicaid should only cover US citizens.

Health insurance shouldn't exist at all, we should have a national system but as things are right now, undocumented immigrants pay taxes so they should reap the benefits. Otherwise, the taxation is theft. The same applies to citizens too. It's bullshit that a person pays taxes that the government could use to provide them health care, but the government doesn't and then that person has to pay for private insurance.

Yes, it should. There's no reason I should pay for someone else's healthcare.

[Shofercia]

That's even worse. Considering that they don't know how many illegal immigrant seniors there are in Illinois, what kind of illnesses they have, what the rate of incoming illegal immigrant seniors is going to be, whether or not the children of illegal immigrants are developing into productive taxpayers who'll stay in Illinois, (remember this is a state program, not a federal one,) whether or not this will increase the emigration from Illinois based on perception alone, whether or not this will cause an influx of illegal immigrant seniors into Illinois, etc, etc, etc, that number sounds more and more like it's made up.

Yes. Politician gets amendment in budget using made-up figures.

Except I haven't actually checked that. For all I know she might have had modelling and she might have handed out printed copies before giving the speech proposing the amendment. If it wasn't reported in that article then I don't know it.

Just be honest and admit that you don't know either. You're attacking the figures because you don't like the principle, and assuming there are no better figures because ... you haven't looked for them. OK?

I want universal healthcare for all of the World, because that way, we can focus on preventative medicine and lower the cost of healthcare, and the spread of infectious diseases, Worldwide. There is nothing wrong with Ramirez's intent. There is almost everything wrong with how Ramirez is doing it.

My issue, as I've already stated, is that it'll be used against universal healthcare in the universal healthcare debate. As I've noted:

Illinois is too far gone to be saved, but advocates against universal healthcare will point to Illinois and say "see, it failed in Illinois, why do we want it? It's a piss poor program!" whereas the real reason it failed, is because Illinois' administration are dum-dums, not because it's a bad program, so in essence, Illinois is screwing it up for the rest of us.

The debate isn't about whether or not we should have universal healthcare; the debate is how to best implement it. And while I don't know for sure, I am very certain that Ramirez used made up numbers, because I highly doubt that Illinois conducts superb quality research, partly because I haven't seen said research on any issue, and partly because the numbers I glanced at, aren't even close to the $2 million that's being suggested. I think that we should institute a new rule - if the politician says that the program only costs x amount of money, say $2 million, let's cut it off after $2 million's spent, how's that? Maybe that'll stop politicians from lying about overall figures.

The reason it is an issue for me, is because the exact same thing happened in California when it came to public transportation, where the high speed rail was used to turn public opinion against public transportation, because the cost was vastly underestimated. And now we're talking about shortening bus routes. And then COVID-19 hit. Now the crisis is existential for our public transportation system. And the high speed rail's still not built. If we don't learn from our mistake, then it's just a giant waste of money, that leads to the poor becoming poorer, since it's the poor that rely on medicaid and public transportation the most.