Titus, Berkley Dissemble on Illegals and Health Care Reform

(Chuck Muth) – The following exchange took place on the November 27th edition of Nevada Week in Review hosted by Mitch Fox….

FOX: Settle it once and for all. Does this bill provide coverage for illegal immigrants, yes or no?

REP. DINA TITUS (D-Nev.): No. No. You can point to page, chapter and verse of where it says that no person who is undocumented, who is illegal, can qualify to get insurance in the public option, in any kind of tax breaks. They can’t even participate in the program. It says that very clearly in the House bill.

REP. SHELLEY BERKLEY (D-Nev.): Exactly right. The bill, the legislation also provides for a mechanism to determine whether or not somebody is illegal. So there is no intent for illegal aliens to be covered under the bill and there is a verification process in the House version of the bill that people would have to demonstrate that they were legal in order to, um, be part of the exchange and be part of the public option.

So the issue is settled once and for all now, right?

Wrong.

“H.R. 3962 (the House health care bill) would deliberately permit illegal aliens to participate in the government health insurance exchange and in the public option insurance program,” wrote Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation on November 23rd. “It would nominally bar them from receiving health care ‘affordability credits’ and most regular Medicaid benefits, but verification procedures are weak and subject to fraud.

“Moreover,” Rector continued, “any limitations on benefits provided to illegal immigrants under the House bill are deceptive. The President and the congressional leadership clearly intend that these limits will be only temporary, to be overturned by amnesty or ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ legislation that will be introduced next spring.”

Cynics will say Mr. Rector is wrong because….well, because the Heritage Foundation is a conservative organization so, naturally, he couldn’t possibly be giving us the straight skinny, right?

OK, how about the Washington Post…a newspaper that in no way, shape, form or fashion could be mistaken for a voice of conservatism. And the Washington Post clearly reported that “Under the bill approved by the House, illegal immigrants would not be barred from the (health insurance) exchanges.”

In addition, the New York Times, the liberal bible for all things political, reports that hhe House health reform bill “would allow illegal immigrants to buy coverage from a national insurance exchange.”

So on the question of whether or not the House version of the health care bill includes illegal immigrants, who are you gonna believe: Dina Titus and Shelley Berkley or the Washington Post and the New York Times?

Good, Lord. What a choice.