Biting off their nose to spite their face
Well, the Republicans have done it again. Another overly restrictive law meant to punish illegal aliens has ended up hurting more U.S. citizens. The 2006 Deficit Reduction Act was the subject of my very first blog post in which I expressed outrage over the requirements for original birth certificates for Medicaid coverage. That meant that innocent little babies with illnesses born to low-income parents would be forced to seek emergency state funding or private insurance to cover the gap between birth and the issuance of their birth certificates, which can take weeks or even months in some states! I was dismayed at the government’s lack of concern for the health of these newborn children and now it seems that thousands of U.S. citizen parents are delaying needed operations, immunizations, etc., due to the burden involved with producing these documents for their Medicaid applications.
Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say
they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory
documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways, for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.
“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.
