Whatever Happened to Caring About Your Neighbor?

There was a time when I was proud of America's ability to care for those who couldn't care for themselves. That time has past. With Reagan's concept of "deserving poor", swept away is decades of commitment to the disabled and elderly.
On the face of it, it makes sense. Everyone has a birth certificate, right? If they can't produce it, then they must be an illegal alien. The disenfranchised have never had a suburban existance. Old African American women from the rural south were denied access to health facilities for child birth. Their births were not recorded. They don't have a birth certificate. Then there are millions of elderly in nursing homes who are unable to help produce the documents and have no family to help.
In ten years we'll be preventing 35,000 illegal aliens healthcare. In the meantime, 3 million frail Americans will face the same fate unless something is done. Just how does that make sense? Republican lawmakers know the truth. They just don't care. I have to believe the average citizen doesn't know. I hope so.
WaPo

A Medicaid rule takes effect tomorrow that will require more than 50 million poor Americans to prove their citizenship or lose their medical benefits or long-term care. Under the rule, intended to curb fraud by illegal immigrants, such proof as a passport or a birth certificate must be offered at the time a person applies for Medicaid benefits or during annual reenrollment in the state-federal program for the poor and disabled.


Critics fear that the provision will have the unintended consequence of harming several million U.S. citizens who, for a variety of reasons, will not be able to produce the necessary paperwork. They include mentally ill, mentally retarded and homeless people, as well as elderly men and women, especially African Americans born in an era when hospitals in the rural South barred black women from their maternity wards.


[...]On Capitol Hill yesterday, several members of Congress called for a delay in implementation. They said verification will effectively bar some Medicaid recipients from health care. Just how many is unclear. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the requirement would cause 35,000 people, mostly illegal immigrants, to lose coverage by 2015 and lower Medicaid spending by $735 million over 10 years.


But the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured has warned that the benefits of many citizens will be delayed or denied. Cindy Mann, director of the Center for Children and Family at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, suggested that at least 3 million citizens could be stripped of coverage.


"We are risking people's health care," she said. "And it is a lot of paperwork to solve a problem no one identified."
For the states, administrative costs will be considerable. Maryland and Virginia each have more than 700,000 Medicaid enrollees.