Tuesday, September 25, 2007

S-CHIP Covers Illegal Aliens?   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Some House conservatives are concerned:

September 25, 2007

Dear Colleague:

As the House prepares to debate the expansion of the State Children’s health Insurance Program (“SCHIP”), I wanted to make you aware of a provision in the bill that will make it significantly easier for both legal and illegal aliens to fraudulently qualify for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs.

Current law requires that states must determine whether persons applying for Medicaid and SCHIP are U.S. citizens and therefore entitled to participate in these programs.  States can satisfy this requirement by having applicants show specified types of identity documents, like drivers’ licenses, passports or birth certificates, when they apply for these programs.  

Section 211 of the new bill will substantially weaken the current requirements and make it easier for both legal and illegal aliens to break the law and qualify for Medicaid and SCHIP.  The language in the bill would allow states to disregard the current requirement to review actual identity documents and instead submit the names and Social Security numbers of applicants to the Social Security Administration (“SSA”).

In order to better understand the impact of these changes, on Friday I wrote a letter to the Social Security Administration, asking whether this type of process could detect and prevent legal and illegal aliens from improperly qualifying for Medicaid and SCHIP.  In his response (copy attached), SSA Commissioner Astrue indicated that the new provision would fail to identify and therefore prevent the following categories of persons from illegally getting healthcare benefits through Medicaid or SCHIP:

·       Legal aliens who are not naturalized citizens;
·       Illegal aliens fraudulently using another persons valid name and Social Security number;
·       Individuals who have illegally overstayed a valid work permit.

Commissioner Astrue’s letter makes it explicitly clear that this new provision will not prevent legal and illegal aliens from violating our laws and qualifying for Medicaid and SCHIP.  I would therefore urge you to oppose this bill, and maintain the current law protections that prevent the abuse of these taxpayer funded healthcare programs.

                                                          Sincerely,               

Jim McCrery, Ranking Member, Committee on Ways and Means

Joe Barton, Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Commerce                             

Nathan Deal, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Health, Committee on Energy and Commerce

09/25 01:13 PMShare