S.F. Democrats Straight-Forward on Health Care for Illegals...Unlike Illinois Colleagues
San Francisco Democrats are so different from their colleagues in Illinois.
Illinois Democrats passed the “All Kids” health care program primarily to provide health care to children who are in the United States illegally, but didn’t have the courage to say so.
Not so San Francisco Democrats.
Or, maybe, it’s that reporters in San Francisco are more astute than those in Illinois. Certainly, there was an opportunity to quote Republicans about the "illegals" angle to Governor Rod Blagojevich's bill.
I, for one, would have appreciated a little truth in advertising prior to the bill's passage. You know, tell your consituents what you are trying to do before you do it.
I'd even settle for the truth now, although I readily admit that Elgin's Daily Courier-News laddled it up boiling hot on December 4th.
Here’s the lead in the Associated Press story of San Francisco’s pioneering effort:
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to make the city the nation's first to provide all residents with health care, approving a plan that would give adults access to medical services regardless of their immigration or employment status. (Emphasis added.)The only two news sources in Illinois to reveal the illegal alien angle early on besides Dick Kay on a Chicago Tonight panel was Crystal Lake’s Northwest Herald and the Quincy Herald-Whig.
When Chicago Newspapers blogger Jim Bowman asked Kay a follow-up question, this was his answer:
He has it exactly right! They will not apply under Kids Care because that is a federally funded program. All Kids is state-only and will cover illegal immigrants so long as they can pay the monthly premium and the co-pay. For that matter it would cover children of billionaires so long as they could pay the much higher premiums that would require. Our sister station, Telemundo, has done a couple of stories on the program.The first hint that illegal aliens might be involved in All Kids didn’t show up until late January in an Illinois AP story and in a Daily Herald story. Of course, neither used the term "illegal alien," but one could read between the lines, if one wanted to.
If anyone can find evidence to contradict my assertion that Illinois reporters failed to discern the primary purpose of All Kids before it was signed, please let provide me with a link. I'd love to publish it (them) on McHenry County Blog.
(I would remind folks that Jim Edgar put forth the Kids Care program, which provides welfare medical benefits to poor kids who are legally in the United States. Now, Blagojevich is switching children from Kids Care to All Kids to pump up the latter's numbers.)
3 comments:
If the point here is that All Kids shouldn't cover some children because of their parents' immigration status, you should make that argument clearly.
There's nothing -- either in the AP story out of SF or the stories you cite -- to indicate that the primary purpose of All Kids is to provide health insurance to children of parents who do not have resident alien status; or that the SF ordinance is about anything other than universal health care coverage, which of course includes everyone, regardless of immigration status.
There are enough outstanding questions about All Kids (does it work? what will it cost?) that you don't have to throw in the red herring of immigration, with all the attendant ugliness, chauvinism, and xenophobia that some people feel compelled to draw out whenever the issue is discussed.
Thanks for pointing that out. You raise a valid point.
If we pay for the education for illegals, who will grow up to be angry criminals? Where we will find the next Padilla if we treat aliens with respect and give them a real opportunity?
We keep up on that road, and a lot of police, prosecutors, and jailers are going to be out of jobs.
All thanks to Blago.
Somebody ought to stop that guy.
My point here and elsewhere is that Illinois Democrats were not as forthright as S.F. Democrats
And, I really believe that citizens have a right to know what is about to happen when a major philosophical change is about to be passed BEFORE it is passed.
A narrow point, perhaps, but rather necessary if a democracy is to operate well.
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