Gosh, kinda hard to tell, but on balance: Yeah, probably, although they can’t get it at the lowest possible rate. From Big Hollywood:
…Obama debunked “disinformation” alleging that illegal aliens would be eligible for the proposed plan. “That’s not true,” he objected, “There’s a specific provision in the bill that does not provide health insurance for those individuals.”
Let’s take a look at the text, shall we? The provision he cited is located on page 143 and reads as follows:
SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS
Wow. Can’t get much clearer than that! It looks like the Big O is right: Undocumented aliens are excluded from collecting benefits under the plan
But… hey, wait a cotton-pickin’ minute!
On page 50, SEC. 152 explicitly prohibits discrimination under the act with “regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.”
In other words, undocumented aliens are not only eligible for ObamaCare, but their coverage is mandated.
So what’s up, Big O? Quit jacking us around! Are they covered or not?
A further reading of Section 246 reveals that the plan only disallows “Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”
“Affordability credits” are federal subsidies that offset the cost of monthly health plan premiums for low income earners.
So, in short, undocumented aliens are eligible for the plan under Section 152, but ineligible for premium subsidies.
I just love how the titles of laws and sections often contradict the actual content of same.
And I love how one section taketh away, but another section giveth.
The sharpest point here is about more than health care: in a bill of this size, you can’t understand the effect of a given provision until you have read and understood the way it interacts with every other provision. You can’t just do a keyword search, particularly just on titles, and have any expectation of understanding what the hell is going on.
And that doesn’t even begin to talk to about regulations that aren’t included in the bill itself, but will be written in response to the bill by the affected agencies, or worse, by agencies that will be created by the bill. Or amendments to the bill the night before the before the vote. Or the way the bill amends existing laws by reference, with no way to understand the effect without reading the text of said law. (Man, I wonder if it’s ever happened that some policy now being enforced is really null and void because Law A was amended by Law B, but then Law A was changed by Law C so that Law B now points at language that no longer exists?)
The most important question at town meetings should be, “Can you prove your last answer by citing the bill? …Really? Are you absolutely positive that’s all the bill says about that? Is there anything in the bill that explicitly prohibits [Agency In Question] from enforcing regulations to that effect?”
