Internet Scofflaw

Last September:

THE PRESIDENT: Tonight I want to address some of the key controversies that are still out there. Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. . .

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You lie! (Boos.)

THE PRESIDENT: It’s not true.

Now, according to the Associated Press:

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus object to a provision in the Senate legislation — backed by the White House — that bars illegal immigrants from buying health insurance within a proposed new marketplace, or exchange, even if they use their own money to buy from private companies.

Illegal immigrants can buy private health insurance now, so some lawmakers say the White House position goes too far. The House bill doesn’t have that language, and several members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met with Obama at the White House on Thursday to tell him that if that changed, he could lose as many as 20 votes.

“I think that he got our message,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., head of the Hispanic Caucus, said afterward.

House leaders said that, in keeping with the Hispanic Caucus’ demands, there was not likely to be any prohibition added to the House bill against illegal immigrants shopping in the exchange.

Note that the bill passed the House 220-215, so it only would have taken three of the threatened twenty votes to defeat the bill. In other words, the inclusion of illegal immigrants is an essential part of the bill.

Now, I haven’t read the bill (obviously, it’s two thousand pages long), so I concede it’s barely possible that it creates an option for illegal immigrants to shop in the exchange without receiving the subsidy that is the entire purpose for the exchange to exist. Perhaps it’s even possible that the bill contains an enforcement mechanism to ensure that illegal immigrants use that hypothetical no-subsidy option. I don’t believe it for an instant.

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