Politifact named “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” the Lie of the Year for 2013. Sound familiar? Obama care and the slew of lies that were spewed to the American people are still permeating their way through our society.
President Joe Biden however, is doubling down on providing health care on the American taxpayer's dime. The White House announced a plan to open the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, and Medicaid rolls to hundreds of thousands of DACA illegal aliens.
This new “plan” will cost the American taxpayers billions to enact.
In 2020, the Center for Immigration Studies researchers estimated that the cost of opening Obamacare and Medicaid rolls to illegal aliens would cost American taxpayers about $4,600 per illegal alien.
Biden’s Obamacare and Medicaid proposed plan for DACA illegal aliens has the potential to cost American taxpayers roughly $2.8 billion every year.
One of the biggest lies that accompanied Obamacare, “Your Premiums Will Go Down by $2,500 a year.”
Premiums actually increased by about 60% in the first four years. Insurance premium amounts varied in an increase from $2,524 for an individual between the ages of 31 and 40 to $12,040 for a family headed by someone over age 60.
Obamacare was also supposed to increase access to care for millions of Americans, when in fact, the opposite became true.
So of course we should subsidize care for thousands of DACA illegal immigrants, and make sure that they have access to health care. That totally makes sense.
Here is where I am going to get a little personal with you guys. This pisses me off. In fact, anything to do with government-sponsored health care or any mention of Obamacare is an automatic "hell no" from me.
But, I have to admit that it is personal for me. My family was one of many to suffer due to Obamacare and then we were also severely affected by the 2014 Farm Bill that Obama signed into law that cut $8.7 billion in food stamp assistance.
First, the access to medical care that my children, including my disabled son, was terminated. Then, we lost all of our food stamps, that at the time were vital for my family. In order to explain what I mean by this, let me go back and explain about our circumstances leading up to Obama trying to kill off my family.
My husband and I have four children. My oldest, then twins and my youngest are all five years apart in age. My oldest and the twins are 10 1/2 months apart. My husband and I both worked for the State of Texas as correctional officers and we had our hands full raising our little family. One of the twins, Christopher was born with Neurofibromatosis, or NF1, and Noonan syndrome.
NF1 is a genetic condition that causes tumors to grow along your nerves. A tumor can develop anywhere inside the body where there is a nerve ending, including the brain and spine. Some tumors are outside of the body as well and can be numerous and large.
Noonan syndrome is a condition that affects many areas of the body. It is characterized by mildly unusual facial features, short stature, heart defects, bleeding problems, skeletal malformations, and many other signs and symptoms.
To say that my son faced a ton of medical issues is an understatement. At any given time, he was under the care of multiple doctors that represented numerous specialties.
When I was 28 years old, and my children were still young, I became deathly ill and was hospitalized. Thank goodness that I had an incredibly smart doctor who realized that I was in adrenal failure. I was diagnosed with Addison's disease, but that was just the beginning of my medical problems. Several near-death experiences later, and six additional diagnoses later, I was declared to be disabled.
My monthly medication costs were over $5,000 thousand dollars. I was unable to take care of my young children and my husband made the decision to quit his job to become a full-time caregiver. He also enrolled in online college courses to become an educator and a coach, but he had to do so at a slow pace.
At this point, I was on Medicare and I had what was called a gap policy that covered what Medicare did not cover. I paid $144.00 a month and by doing so, it meant that 100% of my medical costs were covered.
My children were on Medicaid, which meant that Christopher could continue to get the care that he needed. When he was 12, the decision was made to put him on Human Growth Hormones. He was tiny and had very little muscle mass. Want to take a guess of how expensive his HGH therapy was?
At that time his medication cost over $6,000 a month, and this is where we became trapped in the welfare system. We were receiving $600.00 a month in food stamps, and we were raising our four children on my $1700 a month.
It was tight, and my husband and I made major sacrifices so that my children had what they needed and some of what they wanted. The most important thing was that they were safe, had food, and had access to all the medical care that they needed.
Then here comes Obama care.
Within two months I received a letter from my gap insurance company informing me that my policy will go from $144.00 a month to over $700. The news was devastating. It was unaffordable, and I knew that my family was going to suffer when I was no longer covered.
Then here comes the Farm Bill.
Medicaid and Food stamps were cut and new regulations about who qualified were enacted. While we were receiving assistance, we had been going through a review process every six months. My doctor had always ensured that forms were on file that showed that my husband could not work as he was needed in the home as a caregiver.
During our first review after the farm bill was signed into law, I mentioned to my case worker that my husband was also going to college online to become an educator so that he could provide a better life for us. She immediately informed me that if he was going to school, he was required to also work.
Despite having a doctor explain that he was my caregiver and the caregiver of our children, they denied the renewal of our food stamps and Medicaid for the children because we dared to find a way to rise above our circumstances. We were in a no-win situation.
They lost their medical coverage, as did I, and the food was taken off our table so It is deeply personal to me when we have a national discussion about these things because of what we went through, but also because I know that we are not the only ones. There was not then, nor now, enough coverage about the havoc that wrecked in the lives of everyday Americans because politicians made horrible decisions and put our lives on the line, for what exactly?
"Congress passed a bipartisan Farm Bill that is going to make a big difference in communities across the country," then-President Brack Obama said.
Obama spoke about economic inequality, and added that the Farm Bill would "give more Americans a shot at opportunity."
The only opportunity he provided our household with was despair.
Politicians play all the games that they like and use data and statistics that some aid sitting in a broom closet of an office came up with in ten minutes to justify themselves and they do so without actually feeling the wrath of their bad decisions.
And yet, here we go again.
Most recently, in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made the state the first and only in the nation to provide free, taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits to all illegal alien residents. The plan, set to start in 2024, will cost Californians about $2.4 billion annually.
Currently, American taxpayers are forced to subsidize at least $18.5 billion of annual medical costs for illegal aliens living in the United States, according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
Congressional Hispanic Caucus on the announcement:
Today, we applaud President Biden’s decision to provide more equitable access to health care to hundreds-of-thousands of Latinos in our communities and throughout the country. This decision also marks a significant accomplishment for the CHC. This change in policy has been a priority for the CHC and we have pushed multiple Administrations to provide access to quality, affordable, health care for DACA recipients. This morning, the hard work of the CHC, our members, and DACA recipients and advocates has paid off. The change CHC fought for is finally underway. As a result of this change, approximately 600,000 DACA recipients and their U.S. citizen children will be able to secure and purchase health insurance through the ACA. Access to ACA and Medicaid benefits will allow a significant number of Latinos to improve their quality of life, obtain affordable, quality health care, and make way for a healthier future for our communities. We thank the Biden-Harris Administration for their commitment to Latino communities who have historically been disadvantaged when it comes to accessing health care. We also ask the Department of Health and Human Services to act with urgency and implement the changes as soon as possible so that DACA recipients can quickly access the benefits that – as taxpayers – they have earned.”
On Thursday, Biden stated on Twitter, "Today, my Administration is announcing our plan to expand health coverage for Dreamers, the thousands of young people brought to the U.S. as kids. We’re not done fighting for their pathway to citizenship, but we're getting them the opportunities they deserve in the meantime."
Despite my personal feelings about medical coverage and the federal government's proven track record of making things worse without actually fixing anything, there are real issues that need to be addressed. Illegal immigration is putting a strain on our medical infrastructure and it is not a cheap problem.
Breitbart reports that the chief executive of a 406-bed hospital in Yuma, Arizona explains the staggering extent to which illegal immigration translates to crowded and draining medical services that American taxpayers have to foot the bill for.
“Our reality is this. We have delivered over $26 million in uncompensated care to these individuals in the 12-month period of time from December 2021 to November 2022,” the hospital executive told the House Judiciary Committee. “That is an auditable figure.”
“Migrant patients are receiving free care,” he continued. “They have no ability to pay. We have no ability to bill anyone. We don’t know their final destination. We don’t know anything about them.”
Illegal immigration is costing the American taxpayers a fortune, not just due to medical coverage. In fact, according to a cost analysis published by the Federation for American Immigration Reform:
- At the start of 2023, the net cost of illegal immigration for the United States – at the federal, state, and local levels – was at least $150.7 billion.
- FAIR arrived at this number by subtracting the tax revenue paid by illegal aliens – just under $32 billion – from the gross negative economic impact of illegal immigration, $182 billion.
- In 2017, the estimated net cost of illegal migration was approximately $116 billion. In just 5 years, the cost to Americans has increased by nearly $35 billion.
- Illegal immigration costs each American taxpayer $1,156 per year ($957 after factoring in taxes paid by illegal aliens).
- Each illegal alien or U.S.-born child of illegal aliens costs the U.S. $8,776 annually.
- Evidence shows that tax payments by illegal aliens cover only around a sixth of the costs they create at all levels in this country.
- A large percentage of illegal aliens who work in the underground economy frequently avoid paying any income tax at all.
- Many illegal aliens actually receive a net cash profit through refundable tax credit programs.
The Number of Illegal Immigrants in the US
Estimating the fiscal burden of illegal immigration on the U.S. taxpayer depends on the size and characteristics of the illegal alien population. The FAIR study defines “illegal alien” as anyone who entered the United States without authorization or anyone who unlawfully remains once his/her authorization has expired.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government has no central database containing information on the citizenship status of everyone lawfully present in the United States.
"The overall problem of estimating the illegal alien population is further complicated by the fact that the majority of available sources on immigration status rely on self-reported data. Given that illegal aliens have a motive to lie about their immigration status in order to avoid discovery, the accuracy of these statistics is dubious at best. All of the foregoing issues make it very difficult to assess the current illegal alien population of the United States," FAIR writes.
"However, FAIR now estimates that there were at least 15.5 million illegal alien residents as of the beginning of 2022. This estimate takes into account drastic, ongoing increases in illegal immigration under the Biden administration. This estimate also includes some categories of individuals without legal status, like DACA recipients and parolees, who are illegal aliens under law but misleadingly excluded from many estimates. For more information on how we reached this figure, refer to the FAIR study “How Many Illegal Aliens Live in the United States?”
How have politicians playing games with people's lives affected you or your family? How much longer is the federal government going to be able to sustain printing money and throwing it at all the wrong things before we see some extremely serious consequences in our daily lives?
