Denying Health Care to Infants is Not the Answer

This is harsh. Newborn children of illegal immigrants are U.S. citizens according to the constitution as long as they are born within our borders. The Bush administration has ordered hospitals to withhold health care from them until they can provide documentation of citizenship (i.e., to receive care in the hospital the child was born in, the parents must first prove that the child was born there which makes no sense -- if the child was born there, citizenship is not in question). This is not the solution to the immigration problem, and it won't do anything to hold down rising health costs or noticeably reduce government spending on social programs. In fact, the policy could increase costs by eliminating needed preventative care and causing more costly health problems in the future:

Medicaid Wants Citizenship Proof for Infant Care, by Robert Pear, NY Times: Under a new federal policy, children born in the United States to illegal immigrants with low incomes will no longer be automatically entitled to health insurance through Medicaid, Bush administration officials said Thursday.

Doctors and hospitals said the policy change would make it more difficult for such infants, who are United States citizens, to obtain health care needed in the first year of life. ... In the past, once a woman received emergency care under Medicaid for the birth of a baby, the child was deemed eligible for coverage as well, and states had to cover the children for one year from the date of birth.

Under the new policy, an application must be filed for the child, and the parents must provide documents to prove the child’s citizenship. .. Obtaining a birth certificate can take weeks in some states, doctors said. Moreover, they said, illegal immigrant parents may be reluctant to go to a state welfare office to file applications because they fear contact with government agencies that could report their presence to immigration authorities.

Administration officials said the change was necessary under their reading of a new law, the Deficit Reduction Act, signed by President Bush in February. The law did not mention newborns, but generally tightened documentation requirements because some lawmakers were concerned that immigrants were fraudulently claiming United States citizenship to get Medicaid.

Marilyn E. Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Medicaid program, said: “The federal government told us we have no latitude. ... We will not be able to cover any services for the newborn until a Medicaid application is filed. That could be days, weeks or months after the child is born.” ...

Doctors and hospitals denounced the policy change and denied that it was required by the new law. Dr. Jay E. Berkelhamer, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the policy “punishes babies who, according to the Constitution, are citizens because they were born here.”

Dr. Martin C. Michaels, a pediatrician in Dalton, Ga., said that continuous coverage in the first year of life was important because “newborns need care right from the start.” “Some Americans may want to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants, and others may want to send them home,” Dr. Michaels said. “But the children who are born here had no say in that debate.” ...

Representative Charlie Norwood, Republican of Georgia, was a principal architect of the new law. “Charlie’s intent was that every person receiving Medicaid needs to provide documentation,” said John E. Stone, a spokesman...

The new policy “will cost the health care system more in the long run,” Dr. Berkelhamer added, because children of illegal immigrants may go without immunizations, preventive care and treatments needed in the first year of life. ...

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law at George Washington University, said: “The new policy reflects a tortured reading of the new law and is contrary to the language of the 1984 statute, which Congress did not change. The whole purpose of the earlier law, passed with bipartisan support, was to make sure that a baby would not have a single day’s break in coverage from the date of birth through the first year of life.”

California has objected to the new policy. S. Kimberly Belshé, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said: “By virtue of being born in the United States, a child is a U.S. citizen. What more proof does the federal government need?”

Indeed. For children born in hospitals, there is no reason at all not to make it simple to document citizenship from the moment of birth.

Even if this policy does encourage more people to cross the border, I can't agree with a solution that imposes penalties on infant children, especially penalties that affect their health. As the wealthy nation we are, if we provide health care to too many children in the world rather than too few, I won't lose any sleep over it.

Solve the problem some other way.