July 28, 2009
The Honorable Max Baucus
United States Senate
511 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Chairman Baucus:
Thank you for all of your efforts to achieve the critical reforms needed in health care. We know it is an enormous undertaking and appreciate the intensity of what you have before you. As you and your colleagues craft the long needed reform of our health care system, our organizations believe strongly that these reforms should be as inclusive as possible.
As you near completion on a health reform bill in the Finance Committee, we urge you to treat legal immigrants the same as you treat everyone else by removing all waiting periods in public health insurance programs for all legal immigrants, including them equitably in the subsidy structure and ensuring affordable health care for all children.
We share your goal of expanding the number of individuals who have affordable health insurance and reducing the number of uninsured in America. This means we must ensure lawfully present residents have equal access to subsidies and low income immigrants are not excluded from Medicaid because of the five year waiting period. The current waiting period in Medicaid is particularly unfair because the immigrants subject to the waiting period pay the exact same taxes as citizens. Earlier this year, thanks in no small part to your leadership, Congress eliminated the 5-year waiting period that prevented legal immigrant children from having affordable health care in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). We urge you to take the next steps in restoring fairness by mandating the inclusion of legal immigrants, including children and adults, so that Medicaid is available to all legal immigrants on the same basis as citizens. This is an issue of fundamental fairness, and voters across the political spectrum strongly support allowing legal immigrants to use the programs their taxes pay for.
We also urge you to make all immigrant children and pregnant women, without regard to their immigration status, eligible for Medicaid on the same basis as citizens. This is not only the right thing to do, it will save money over time by ensuring these residents have access to preventive care and rely less on expensive emergency room care. Universal coverage should include our most vulnerable.
All Americans deserve health care they can afford. We simply cannot afford half-measures and unfair exclusions in health reform that leave out millions of Americans.
The following organizations urge you to take these actions to ensure we are achieving truly responsible health reform that does no harm.
Sincerely,