And they say there's no bi-partisanship!

Cool!

I think emergency rooms have to serve everyone by law. As for illegal immigrants getting offical service we have to submit information for, yeah, it does sound a bit crazy. Undocumented Americans. They stopped using the phrase when drivers licenses came into the debate mysteriously. Maybe I'll talk with an accent and apply for a NJ license again. I don't have health coverage and I was born and raised here. Should I get to the back of the bus to someone who snuck in and now wants Medicare? If he works does he pay taxes?

How can you get official government services if you can't provide indentification, and are in a country illegally? So, sure, everyone should get emergency medical, as we would expect in a foreign country. But people who are here illegally, should not get better treatment than people who are, were born here, vote here, and pay taxes here. As it is we have a 50 trillion Medicare/Medicaid obligation. The question we should be asking is not who to insure, so much as how do we limit costs in the first place so we can insure our own first? Maybe we should bill their country of origin when we perform a $20,000 operation on someone who is basically a criminal, as the word illegal suggests.

No @snoreinville and @ericbornunenlightened: people that work their asses off cleaning your shit and doing every kind of work americans don't want to do for the price the market is willing to pay, should get health coverage when they get sick here -- for working here -- like anyone else. Who the heck is from here anyway? Are you all american indians?

Eric, single payer is not going to stop operations from being $40,000, so single payer for 80 million aging baby boomers is unpayable. HMOs are a big part of the problem, but the bulk is what surgeons and hospitals are chargin in the first place. If we have a 50 trillion medicare obligation now, it could be 100 trillion insuring everyone.

If I do not have insurance, work and pay taxes, why should someone who cheats the government get government services outside of emergencies? Because they work for crappy wages keeping wages low and putting Americans out of work? Americans will do any job if they are paid enough. Neither party wants to put a real fence up because one wants votes, the other cheap labor.

What happens in countries where the health system works is that everybody is obliged to pay for the health care system, even if they are not citizens just residents. Because the more people you have contributing to the pool, the lower the prices are. it's like that in France, Japan and most of the first world countries, except USA. The second thing to lower costs at the hospitals, because as I've seen often, sometimes 3 different doctors come to see the same patient. All of them will get payed... Tests and more tests are made when they could be avoid by better clinical training/formation of medical students...

It just shows how lacking in compassion we are. Just because people repeatedly sneak into our country illegally, falsify work documents and co-opt others social security numbers - is that a reason not to provide them and their children with FREE, comprehensive health insurance? After all we're already providing them with all kinds of other FREE services like education, so it seems kind of cruel to not give them FREE everything else such as health care, unemployment, wellfare, social security, etc.

And I think as a country we're slowly realizing this because a few months ago after the INS raided a business in Washington state and detained a bunch of illegal aliens, a big dust up occurred and ultimately the INS released them and they were even given an official APOLOGY!

And I hope in the future the INS has the good sense not to try to identify and deport those in this country illegally!

And furthermore, when it comes to free health care, why should we stop with illegal aliens? Why not provide free health care to every person in the world!? That's the compassionate thing to do. After all they're all humans, just like us and we have so much extra government money that we don't know what to do with.

Just saying.

fins2theleft,
Tell it!