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US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card
According to Wired (and no big surprise, considering the practicalities of implementing massive changes in medical finance), US lawmakers "are proposing a national identification card, a 'fraud-proof' Social Security card required for lawful employment in the United States. The proposal comes as the Department of Homeland Security is moving toward nationalizing driver licenses."
Nice national ID cards for our safety and you know just to be on the safe side we need a DNA database too, to prevent people from misusing this program...and hey we need to start monitoring your internet usage to prevent people from pretending to be you and setting up appoitments or chaning your information.
Yeah its nothing to be worried about, Im sure it will be all OK.
"You just got the right to healthcare, but do you really want that going to illegal immigrants?"
That's actually a bizarre statement. The options are:
1) Illegal immigrants can pay for health care in the open market (potentially taxpayer subsidized).
2) We can pay for illegal immigrants to go to hospitals as indigent care (definitely taxpayer subsidized).
I don't really understand why people would go for #2. If I can choose 100% loss vs. even 95% loss, I'm going to go with the 95%.
And that's exactly what the real native true blooded americans should have done when your ancestors waltzed on in pretending they had some kind of a right to be there.
You really ought to learn to argue this in a way that doesn't reek of xenophobia. There *are* legitimate criticisms of uncontrolled immigration, but when you argue it on the basis of "I've got mine" you turn people off. Immigration is still useful; this country, like most countries, is a Ponzi scheme of a sort. Without immigration our population would contract and the whole scheme would collapse. Limited, legal immigration maintains the necessary population growth while allowing time for services and infrastructure to expand to support the additional load. Unlimited immigration could mean overwhelming the existing systems before they have time to adapt. Striking a balance is important, but your xenophobia causes knee jerk opposition to your argument.
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Why? Because diseases are communicable. And because keeping people healthy benefits everyone. And because it's the morally correct thing to do.
My former roommate was an ER nurse. At one of her jobs, she was the only nurse who spoke Spanish and, as such, treated a lot of the illegal immigrants that came in. She would complain to no end about how these people would come in with some gaping wound and only after treating that wound would she figure out that six other maladies including symptoms consistent with TB. Until she quit the job, she was taking a TB test a least once a month.
The thing is, when people don't have health care, they'll put off going to the doctor until it's unavoidable. Meanwhile, they're walking petrie dishes that interact with the rest of us and help spread disease. And by the time they do come in, their problems are worse and more expensive to fix than they would have been if they'd come in when they first noticed a problem. Sure, we'll attempt to bill them, but it's an almost futile effort. Unless we're ready to accept a health care system where people are denied emergency care unless they've got insurance, there's no way around this. If health care is universal and free, they'll get treated as soon as possible whenever they have something wrong.
Also, even though these people are likely doing menial work, keeping them healthy means they can continue to do that menial labor and we all benefit from that.
Lastly, some of us want to live in a world that's more compassionate than the selfish world that's typically the result of free-market ideals. If I'm fortunate enough to earn a comfortable living and others are not, I want to do my part to help them enjoy a more comfortable life. Not to the extent communism takes things, since that removes the incentive to work hard and try to improve your life, but defining a minimum standard of life to which everyone is entitled is not a bad thing. And I view access to health care as part of that minimum standard of life that I think everyone should have.