MicEvHill.Com - Hispanic Caucus Threatens to Vote Against Senate Health Care Reform Bill

A similar provision was considered last November for inclusion in the House-passed version of health care reform legislation. At the time, CHC Members threatened to vote against the bill if the provision was inserted into the House measure. The fact that Speaker Pelosi had a razor thin majority in favor of the House bill forced her to acceed to the CHC's demands. As a result of the Speaker's intervention, all 24 CHC Members voted in favor of the bill, which the House passed with only two votes to spare.

The Speaker's decision in this round will be a much more difficult one.

Parliamentary circumstances have forced Democrats into a set of procedures that will require the House to pass the Senate bill unhchanged and send it to the President for his signature, and then hope that the House and Senate can pass a second "clean up" bill that makes changes to the just-enacted Senate-passed health care reform bill. Because Senate Democrats lack the 60 votes they need to overcome a promised Republican filibuster of this "clean up" bill, Democrats have been forced to use an arcane process called "budget reconciliation" to push the "clean up" bill through the Senate. A budget reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate and can be passed with as few as 50 votes. But the eased process afforded by the "budget reconcilation" process comes at a price: a "budget reconcilation" bill cannot include any provision that does not have deficit reduction as its primary purpose. This requirement means that any attempt to insert immigration legislative language into a "budget reconcilation" bill will likely be deemed out of order.

As a general matter, the Senate-passed health care reform bill would require almost everyone living in the United States to purchase a qualified health insurance plan or face a tax penalty. It also would establish health insurance exchanges, on which private sector insurance companies would list their health insurance products; establish health affordability tax credits to help persons who cannot afford health insurance purchase it; expand eligibility for Medicaid to a greater number of lower-income persons; and institute a number of requirements on insurance companies with respect to the benefits that they must offer.

With regard to immigrants, the Senate-passed health care reform bill would exempt persons who are not lawfully present in the United States from the measure's general mandate that virtually everyone living lawfully in the United States be covered by a qualified health insurance plan. The bill also would make legal immigrants eligible for the bill's health care affordability tax credits without having to wait for any length of time after entry to the United States. And, perhaps most controversially, the Senate-passed bill generally would bar aliens who are not lawfully present in the United States from using their own funds to purchase health insurance products that are listed on the Health Insurance Exchange that the bill would create.

The Senate-passed health care reform bill would establish a new citizenship and immigration status verification regime that is designed to ensure that persons who are not lawfully present in the United States do not receive health insurance products and benefits from which they are barred. It would rely on the recently enacted Children's Health Insurance Program reauthorization bill's mechanism for verification and subject everyone who purchases health insurance through the exchange, who benefits from an exchange plan, or who receives an affordability tax credit to the new citizenship and immigration status verification regime.

The House of Representatives passed its landmark health care reform bill on November 7, 2009, doing so by a vote of 220-215. the House-passed bill would require every person in the United States to purchase health insurance, establish a new entitlement to federal health care affordability subsidies for lower income individuals and families, and enact significant new consumer reforms to protect the rights and benefits of the insured.

For the most part, the House-passed health care reform bill would provide legal immigrants with the same access to its benefits that U.S. citizens would enjoy, while barring federal health care affordability subsidies to persons who are not lawfully present in the United States. Unlike the Senate-passed health care reform bill , the House-passed measure defied the wishes of President Barack Obama by permitting illegal immigrants to purchase health insurance products with their own funds.