Immigration reform could boost cost of Obamacare by hundreds of billions

Earlier today, I posted on why I thought it was unlikely that immigration reform would actually pass this year. But there's another reason why it will be difficult for Republicans to back legislation as currently outlined – immigration reform could represent a massive expansion of Obamacare, potentially costing hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

As the Washington Post's Sarah Kliff details, legalizing immigrants who are currently in the country illegally could make millions of them eligible for Obamacare. Though the exact number is difficult to pin down for a number of reasons, and we don't know how many immigrants would obtain legal status as a result of any reform package, one Congressional Budget Office report estimated that 7 million to 8 million illegal immigrants would be uninsured after Obamacare because they won't qualify for benefits. If this population were legalized and became eligible, it would mean increasing the number of Obamacare beneficiaries by over 20 percent. (The CBO has estimated that Obamacare would cover 36 million people either through the Medicaid expansion or the exchanges.)

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith

Since the left tells us that religion is no longer an acceptable way to handle human behavior, we are left with morals and ethics. The reason I posted this is we have many moral questions to ask when it comes to current entitlement programs and future entitlement programs and the potential for economic collapse if we add more to a already stressed system.

#6 | POSTED BY ICHIRO

Because we can just print more money or tax the wealthly more? What if you're wrong and the social net fails because of your "open borders"?

It pains me to post this clown but Paul Krugman did address this recently.

Economics and Morality

Mark Thoma directs me to Eric Schoeneberg, who argues that the right is winning economic debates because people believe, wrongly, that there's something inherently moral about free-market outcomes.

So economics is not a morality play; the social and economic order we have doesn't represent the playing out of some kind of deep moral principles.

That doesn't mean the order we have should be overthrown: the pursuit of Utopia, of perfect economic justice, has proved to be the road to hell, while welfare-state capitalism -- a market economy with its rough edges smoothed by a strong safety net -- has produced the most decent societies ever known. The point, though, is that anyone who claims that transferring some income from the most fortunate members of society to the least is a vile injustice is closing his eyes to the obvious reality of how the world works.

Damn the drone from you liberals is obscene. The rich are horrible and they need to give more money to the poor. What no Bush references?
Not one of you understands the simplest of economic rules, supply and demand. You whine insistently about wages and the poor and you want to fill the entry level worker market with open borders but your little minds can't see the obvious issue of oversupply of the labor market causing wage deflation. You take every tax, regulatory and environmental stance that you can find to depress the job market and then you cry because companies are not creating jobs. You promote a monetary policy that rewards the wealthy and reduces the wealth of the poor through inflation and you cry about wealth stratification. If you took your head out of your sphincters long enough to take a honest look around you might make a difference in other peoples lives. I got to stop now because I'm headed for a DR vacation.

#16 | POSTED BY ICHIRO

Where do you get the idea that I or any other conservative doesn't approve of a social safety net?

#18 | POSTED BY ICHIRO

Is your mind that far gone that you have to resort to taking things out of context rather than making a real salient point?

#20 | POSTED BY ICHIRO

What? Back away from the bong, for your own good.

#26 | POSTED BY ICHIRO

I still have no idea what in 6 posts you are trying to ask. I suggest that if you want me to answer a question that you state it clearly. I don't have a history of not answering questions.

Look to Milton
Open borders and the welfare state.

A decade ago, Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman admonished the Wall Street Journal for its idée fixe on open-border immigration policy. "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state," he warned.

To be fully understood, Friedman's comment should be viewed as applying not merely to means-tested welfare programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing, but to the entire redistributive transfer state. In the "transfer state," government taxes the upper middle class and shifts some $1.5 trillion in economic resources to lower-income groups through a vast variety benefits and subsidies.

The transfer state redistributes funds from those with high-skill and high-income levels to those with lower skill levels. Low-skill immigrants become natural recipients in this process. On average, low-skill immigrant families receive $30,160 per year in government benefits and services while paying $10,573 in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of $19,587 that has to be paid by higher-income taxpayers.

It also substantially increases the future flow of low-skill immigrants and gives them access to welfare and transfer programs. Far from building a "wall around welfare," this legislation levels existing walls, builds a highway to Fort Knox, and shovels billions in taxpayer funds into the pockets of immigrants who entered this country illegally.