Starting in November, recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in Arizona and nationwide will be able to obtain health care under the Affordable Care Act.
The Biden Administration finalized the rule Friday surrounding President Joe Biden’s efforts to urge Congress to establish a pathway to citizenship for “dreamers,” young people who have grown up as Americans but do not have citizenship.
“Dreamers are our loved ones, our nurses, teachers, and small business owners,” President Biden said in a statement. “And they deserve the promise of health care just like all of us.”
Biden announced plans in April to open Obamacare and Medicaid rolls, both subsidized by American taxpayers, to nearly 600,000 DACA illegal aliens.
Mario Montoya, a DACA recipient who has lived in the country for over two decades, told KTAR News 92.3 FM he wants to inform almost 21,000 dreamers in Arizona about the expansion of Obamacare coverage.
He said the final rule from the White House was a step forward but fell short of his expectations by not including access to Medicaid or funding under the CHIP and Science Act, as was initially proposed last year.
While Montoya advocated for the expansion of federal programs accessible to dreamers, he acknowledged that the fate of these programs is uncertain at this time.
“The DACA program is still being litigated at the courts and the Supreme Court is ultimately going to have the final decision to see if the program is going to stay,” Montoya said.
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents District 7 in southern Arizona, said in a statement that he thinks the move will expand access to affordable health insurance for thousands.
“Illness does not discriminate on the basis of documentation or legal status,” Grijalva said. “Access to timely health care is advantageous for those families and our communities as a whole.”
Senators J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., as well as several House Republicans, lobbied Biden to drop the plan last year, but the administration moved forward anyway.
“By providing health insurance to DACA recipients, this policy further burdens programs intended to serve U.S. citizens and simultaneously encourages more aliens to enter our country illegally in the hopes of receiving similar protection and services,” the Republicans wrote. “Unfortunately, this approach appears to align with the open-borders agenda advanced by your colleague, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with hundreds of thousands of aliens apprehended trying to enter our country illegally every month.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
Social Security and Medicare are so popular they are commonly known as the “third rail” of politics. Any politician who touches them gets a nasty shock. The politically smart thing for decades has been to periodically increase benefits and not worry too much about adequately funding these supposedly self-sufficient programs
Congress designates SS/Medicare as non-discretionary spending, which allows even fiscal conservatives to earnestly explain that Congress is unable to touch them, not even to reduce the benefit increases they themselves bestowed in the past. Of course, this is ridiculous since Congress could legally eliminate the programs if it chose to do so (not recommended).
As the population has aged and birth rates have fallen, SS/Medicare have descended into serious financial distress. This year, the programs will spend $69 billion more than they take in. The programs’ trustees recently moved the date for expected insolvency up to 2031 for Medicare, 2034 for Social Security.
Yet there is little acknowledgment from the political class that a problem exists. To acknowledge it creates a mandate for making highly unpopular choices. Even Donald Trump, the would be “conservative” leader, has decreed that no part of making America great again will involve touching our major entitlements. The endless quest for re-election continues to dominate decision making in Washington.
Even beyond entitlements, America has a spending problem. The federal government spends about 25% of GDP but only takes in revenues of 19%. The rest is charged off to future generations. With interest rates returning to normal levels, federal debt service will soon exceed $1 trillion a year, roughly what we spend to defend our country.
Why do we continue to spend so recklessly in times of peace and prosperity? It’s partly our perverse politics, where spenders dare opponents to suggest fiscal reforms and then rip them for bringing it up.
It’s also a mindset. Not long ago, families were considered the primary caregivers for each other. It was contemptible to neglect your own.
Americans today believe they are entitled to have government assume what were formerly family duties. Politicians gain millions of grateful dependents and family structure suffers, but there’s no going back.
Federal decision-makers have adopted an all-purpose solution to the problems that plague us: throw dollars at it. Schools failing? Send money. Semiconductor industry struggling? More money. People still living in poverty? Appropriate even more money. Money papers over our problems but affords no actual solutions.
Nobody even talks about the monetary implications of our ongoing border crisis. Over seven million mostly unskilled illegal immigrants breached our borders. Immediately upon successfully registering their fraudulent asylum claims, they expect food, shelter, medical care, transportation, eventually education, and social services all without a thought of paying for them.
The direct and indirect costs are incalculable, but California already reports annual direct expenses of $21.76 billion while Texas pays $8.8 billion and Arizona $3.2 billion.
Yet Democrats contend only more money can solve the problem. Biden and border czar Kamala Harris claim Republicans are responsible for the border mess because they once blocked further spending increases, even though the money goes to accommodate more illegal immigration. It’s time to end this massive farce and lawfully control the border. Democrats will have to find some less costly way to recruit future voters.
Our response to the COVID epidemic was another giant boondoggle. There wasn’t much to do about the virus. Protect the vulnerable, treat the ill, develop a vaccine, and allow it to run its course.
Instead, we embraced an orgy of spending. Trillions went to infrastructure improvements, solar energy, daycare, schools, businesses, and even individuals, all inexplicably in the name of COVID. It didn’t affect the course of the disease, but our descendants will pay for this spree far into the future.
It gets worse. In 2025, the spending caps on Obamacare and other discretionary items are set to expire as are the low interest bonds the government issued when money was cheap. There will be tremendous pressure to spend yet more just to maintain the spending status quo.
Thomas Jefferson, 250 years ago, extolled the benefits of a “wise and frugal” government. We didn’t listen. We will soon wish we had.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Democrats love to talk about the need of establishing a “universal” health care system that provides everyone with the same quality of care. That was the major theme pushed by the left and the media when Obamacare was signed into law in 2010.
We always knew that it was propaganda and that a government-run healthcare system would result in worse care for everyone. What we didn’t know is that the left doesn’t even support this claim. They do like the idea of providing different care to different people, so long as it promotes their radical, race-based social justice agenda.
Rationing COVID treatments based on race
To kick off the new year, health officials in Democrat-run New York made the call to prioritize non-whites as part of their criteria to decide who is eligible to receive monoclonal antibodies. And while white people can still receive the treatments, they’ll have to show that they have medical conditions that increase their risk for severe illness. Non-white patients, however, are automatically eligible.
