LAST week, I shared with you the “Health Care For All” bill” that is expected to be re-introduced by State Sen. Ricardo Lara in November, and like the previous bill, it is expected to be co-sponsored by Filipino American Assemblyman Rob Bonta.
Explaining the bill to the public, Sen Lara said: “It’s going to save us money in the long term. We’re going to be able to have a healthier community, and when we say health care for all, we mean health care for all. Unfortunately, the federal government doesn’t cover our undocumented communities, and we have a lot of families who are mixed households where some have health insurance and some don’t, because of immigration status.”
The challenge that this bill faces is funding. As Senator Lara and company work hard to iron out the “Health Care for All” bill, exploring the possibilities of protecting beneficiaries, they need to figure out how to fund the proposed bill. If the aim to give health care coverage for all — including undocumented immigrants who do not have the means to pay for premium, who will foot the bill?
The Filipino Channel’s daily newscast Balitang America asked its viewers if taxpayers’ money should be used to give free health care to undocumented immigrants.
Supporters of Lara’s bill, including community leader and fellow Asian Journal columnist Prosy Delacruz asked why this is even a question.
Delacruz wrote: Asking this question pegs the viewers to be biased, prejudicial and uncaring, yet they must be involved as American citizens and green card residents, some who are also TNT. I totally get aghast with this seeming innocent ISYU ngayon but what it does is stoke prejudices, instead of educating our kababayans to be participating, involved, caring citizen/voters. When our citizen/voter Kababayans are invisible in the election results, we lose our impact as a community and these questions enable such.
But an overwhelming majority of those who voted on Balitang America’s ISYU NGAYON poll — 86 percent — said NO. They say the taxpayers’ money should go toward services that address the need of those who are in America legally and are paying taxes dutifully. Only 14 percent say they agree taxpayers have the responsibility to pay for health care for the undocumented for humanitarian reasons.
Here is a couple of the dissenting perspectives of some of our readers:
“Free? Nope. Healthcare? Yes. Who’s paying the new Obamacare tax? You are. [Quoting the Washington Post] ‘With an $8 billion tax on insurers due Sept. 30 — the first time the new tax is being collected — the industry is getting help from an unlikely source: taxpayers. States and the federal government will spend at least $700 million this year to pay the tax for their Medicaid health plans….Other insurers are getting some help paying the tax as well. Private insurers are passing the tax onto policyholders in the form of higher premiums. Medicare health plans are getting the tax covered by the federal government via higher reimbursement. State Medicaid agencies say they have little choice….That’s because the tax is part of the health plans’ costs of doing business.’” — NDLH
“The poll of filipino viewers overwhelmingly said NO and that is the majority voice of our kababayans. People should stop labeling those who are not in favor of supporting illegal aliens as racist or uncaring. If we have a different opinion, then please respect it. People are starting to feel the burden of illegals on our State. Taxpayers dollars have been used to support them and basic services for the US Citizens and legal immigrants are being eliminated or reduce due to financial constraints on our government. Legal residents don’t even get free healthcare. Your children have to compete against them for college admission. I am not uncaring. I was an illegal too but never demanded services from the taxpayers. The meaning of TNT (tago ng tago) of yesteryears no longer apply. Now the TNT of today is Take ng Take and some with no shame.” — Marc Notelling
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
Imagine the kind of attention that I am getting from a very passionate facebook post. The most amazing thing is to get an opinion editorial, using two issues of Asian Journal, without so much a notification that I am being quoted. How ethical is that?
This is the accurate Facebook post, “What a question? Would you think that EBOLA virus will know whether you are documented or undocumented? Asking this question pegs the viewers to be biased, prejudicial and uncaring, yet they must be involved as American citizens and green card residents, some who are also TNT. I totally get aghast with this seeming innocent ISYU ngayon but what it does is stoke prejudices, instead of educating our kababayans to be participating, involved, caring citizen/voters. When our citizen/voter Kababayans are invisible in the election results, we lose our impact as a community and these questions enable such.” – See more at: https://asianjournal.com/editorial/will-you-support-free-healthcare-for-undocumented-immigrants/#sthash.nBMKOpm3.dpuf
The second issue of her opinion-editorial excerpted the quote to make it unintelligible and misrepresented my quote.
Notice how attention grabbing that is when a quote that is not intended to be for print is being pegged against the viewers of Balitang America’s who voted for ISYU NGAYON, without saying how many voted, simply a percentage, like 87%? So 4 out of 5 voted overwhelming for this and it now makes it an accurate survey or an accurate polling?
First of all — if we based this poll on our faith, we already fail our readers. Why is that? We have been trained to be generous to another neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself. Even our upbringing is about generosity and compassion to another.
So when Balitang America stokes limited perspectives to become the norm, to make us all selfish, uncaring and very concerned about what we have materially, it tells me that this station is supporting the well-to-do doctors and nurses, their lifestyles, and not our kababayans as they make us think they do. That is total misrepresentation.
Let us make our readers grow to have perspectives at the level of giraffes or elephants, not from the lowest level of a turtle, or worst, the mushrooms that grow in the dark because of lack of proper context and facts.
It is also another misrepresentation to lift a facebook quote and post, without even a personal request to use this in her opinion -editorial, how respectful can you be with that kind of journalistic decision?
The context of my facebook post is based on what Pres. Ronald Reagan did in the 1980’s when he passed the Compassionate Human Care Act which mandated emergency care to undocumented residents, including tourists who come to America. It allowed tourists to come here and get their emergency surgeries and not pay a single cent for it. The taxpayers did.
What Miss Maria Angelina Santos Relos did not inform you is that Pres. Obama seeks to rationalize these rising health care expenses in the astronomical billions which supported the lifestyle of the rich and famous doctors to the detriment of premium payers, the working families who paid health care premiums, which kept increasing and threatened the viability of many small businesses. What Miss Relos failed to inform you is that Pres. Obama sought to reduce those healthcare premiums in the billions to less than half a billion dollars.
So are you now saying to me that this is wrong because it decreases the profits going to doctors who charge their patients?
If you are going to include me in your opinion-editorial, please have the decency, respect and courtesy to ask me why am I saying that and also have some respect to inform me that you will quote me. I do not lift facebook quotes without permission from my facebook friends. That would be unethical breach of friendship and theft of intellectual insight. And, I will take issue with what institutions and cable channels do to “dumb down” the Filipino American public.
Put it this way, if you found yourself in the position of needing healthcare, while an undocumented traveler in Africa, hopefully you will not be as you have an American passport, but let us say, you don’t, would you not want to be treated to wellness and well-being without regard to whether you have an African passport or not? God made us all his beloved children and the health of one is as equally precious as another. This is my perspective as a former public health professional where one death is too many from that standpoint.
We are in a position now to do preventive care for 7,300,000 millions of Americans and green card holders — do we not want a much healthier nation than a nation that is diseased, sick and spreading EBOLA virus, a virus that does not know if you are a Republican or a Democrat, a virus that does not know if you are Filipino or African or White, a virus that does not know if you are documented or not. Whether you see it or not, we all pay for emergency care for undocumented residents, for tourists and they have already been covered by the pen of Pres. Ronald Reagan!! Thanks to Pres. Barack Obama he is changing it such that folks are going for their physical examination, instead of emergency care which is more expensive. Isn’t that more rational?
Just the same, I thank you for another opportunity to share my perspectives. I am not a blind loyalist to Pres. Obama, I support him because he takes into account the highest common good. He is making decisions based on keeping all of us healthy, and not just keeping high net worths higher!–@Prosy Delacruz, 2014.