Redstate

no illegal left behind

By streiff Posted in Democrats — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Not surprisingly, Washington Post columnists have begun to lay a smokescreen for vulnerable Democrat incumbents. The latest is the defense of the indefensible bill reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Regardless of one's feelings about the federal government mucking around in health care, I would hope that most of us could agree that any bill that guts federal prohibitions against illegal aliens receiving benefits, allows the states to lay off most of the cost of the program onto the federal government, and encourages states to not enroll eligible children for a year and a half is bad.

Not according to Ruth Marcus.

Read on.

According to Marcus the complaints are all a set up for nasty attack ads in 2008.

In the course of her defense of this handout to lawbreakers is this rather stunning admission:

The House provision makes the documentation requirement optional [emphasis mine] for states, which, after all, have an interest in seeing that their Medicaid dollars are spent properly. Adults on Medicaid would still have to prove citizenship, swear that their children are citizens and provide their children's Social Security numbers. And states would have to conduct annual audits to ensure that no illegal immigrants are being covered.

In fact, the Washington Post's own coverage of the vote says:

The House bill would enlarge the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, by $47 billion over five years to provide coverage to the additional 5 million children.

Those children would have access to dental and mental health care. And the bill would offer new options for states to extend Medicaid and SCHIP coverage up to age 20 and to cover some legal immigrants and pregnant women.

It isn't often that a senior official takes a columnist to task for an egregiously misleading column but today Dennis Smith the Director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations does just that.

Mr Smith replies in a letter entitled A Bad Bill's Bad Consequences.

The conclusion in Ruth Marcus's Aug. 8 op-ed column, "Attack Ads You'll Be Seeing Soon" -- that public benefits will not be provided to illegal aliens in consequence of recent legislation -- is incorrect. Under the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program passed by the U.S. House, unprecedented new eligibility rules would not only allow public benefits for illegal aliens but would provide incentives to states to open Medicaid and SCHIP to do so.

Mark B. McClellan, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was quoted as saying that an inspector general's report did not find problems related to citizenship status in the current program. However, the very protections in the Medicaid system that work to prevent fraud would be gutted by the House. States would be allowed to turn eligibility determinations over to new "express lane" agencies that would make children eligible on the basis of scant information.

Incredibly, families could refuse to provide or verify information provided to a state agency by an "express lane" agency. A state would also be allowed to determine eligibility for benefits without even taking an application.

States currently have a large stake in preventing Medicaid fraud because they pay, on average, 43 percent of the cost of the program. But Medicaid will become a moneymaker for states if they can put enough people on the rolls of Medicaid and SCHIP. A state that now pays half the cost of Medicaid could use the new "performance bonus" to reduce its share to as little as 5 percent per new person added.

The House bill actually provides an incentive to states to not enroll children in 2008 in order to gain "performance" bonuses in 2009.

There is an interesting aside to Mr. Smith's letter. It appears in the letters to the editor section in today's print edition. In the online version of the print edition, this letter is omitted in favor of letters on wind power, the Bourne movies, the origins of "Rock Around the Clock", and Che Guevara's famous photo. Go figure.