In reponse to our estimate of the potential cost of not screening out illegals from the health-care subsidy, the open-borders crowd is now arging that verifying legal status isn’t even worth it for Medicaid applicants. This is from the immigration lawyers’ lobby:
The Majority Staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that six of nine states surveyed in 2009 “reported that the costs to the states and federal taxpayers to administer the program since implementation began were $16.6 million.” Yet the new eligibility requirements snagged a grand total of eight unauthorized immigrants. In other words, onerous eligibility requirements for Medicaid may not catch many unauthorized immigrants, but they do drive up costs and needlessly ensnare U.S. citizens in bureaucratic red-tape.
But the point of a verification requirement is obviously not to “snag” illegal aliens, it’s to deter them. And it works; as a fellow at one of the state-policy think tanks wrote me today:
We already have precedent for avoiding the illegal issue. When Federal ID requirements went in for Medicaid in 2006, Medicaid caseloads immediately started falling. It isn’t conclusive but it sure is suggestive.
SCHIP caseloads immediately started rising, at least in my state. SCHIP does not require ID. In my state it provides many of the same benefits as Medicaid and costs just $35 a year, max.