“Total Madness”—Democrats Promise Open Borders Plus Free Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
08/16/2019
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Last week Tucker Carlson interviewed a guest familiar with the cost of healthcare who also wasn’t afraid to use the world “billions” in reference to the world population. Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute discussed the results of recent research, pointing out the insane generosity of 2020 Democrats when they offered free-to-them healthcare for illegal aliens.

Below, when a moderator requested of the Democrat candidates, “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide [medical] coverage for undocumented immigrants,” all responded affirmatively.

For more details about Heartland’s report, see Medicare for All: More Taxes, Worse Health Care, and Much More Debt.

Incidentally, numerous illegal aliens have already come to the United States to mooch healthcare from American taxpayers. One of the most obnoxious cases was the several liver transplants performed on illegal alien Ana Puente, whose aunt brought her to the U.S. from Mexico to get medical care. Puente’s attitude was one of entitlement, revealed when she remarked, “It doesn’t matter if I’m undocumented. They should take care of me at UCLA for the rest of my life because I’ve been there since I was a baby.”

In 2006, the Denver Post reported, “Hundreds of Mexican illegal immigrants are in Colorado not just for work but also for free medical care they say they can’t get back home.”

So there’s already a pattern in place of illegal aliens crossing the border to steal free healthcare from the beleaguered American taxpayer. The Democrats want to take it to the globalist extreme to get future voters and turn America into a socialist hellhole forever.

TUCKER CARLSON: 2020 could be the first year that the Democratic Party nominates a self-described socialist for president. Even if they don’t, almost every Democratic candidate running right now has endorsed at least some socialist policies. What are these policies and maybe more important, how much would they cost and would they work? Is there any evidence they would?

Justin Haskins is editorial director and a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, and he joins us tonight to assess. So Justin, we want to take all policy ideas seriously. Clearly the people in charge have screwed up the country, so we’re open-minded always, but give us a sober analysis of some of the big policies these candidates are promoting. Would they make the country better?

JUSTIN HASKINS: No Tucker, unfortunately they would not make the country better: the vast majority of the policies being offered right now by the Democratic Party are going to be incredibly expensive. They have no way to pay for them, and the first one to talk about of course is Medicare for All.

A lot of people have heard that this is going to cost $32 trillion to $38 trillion dollars over the first 10 years, but what does it actually mean for middle-class people? They’re being told that they’re going to save thousands and thousands of dollars because they’re not going to have to pay expensive deductibles and co-pays and things like that, but here’s the truth: we just conducted a study at the Heartland Institute, and we found that middle-class Americans are going to get absolutely screwed by single-payer healthcare.

Forty million to 60 million American households are going to end up paying more in new federal taxes than they’re going to get back in healthcare benefits. People who make $75,000 to $100,000 a year are going to see their tax bills go up, we estimate by 12,000 to $15,000 per year. Those who earn $100,000 or more are going to see their tax bills go up on average by $20,000, and the more money you make, the worse it gets. So single-payer healthcare — there is absolutely no way to pay for that.

And that brings us to our second point: free healthcare for all illegal immigrants. This is one of the most ridiculous policies that has ever been proposed in American history. Here you have 11 million to 29 million illegal aliens here in the country right now, and that’s probably a conservative figure. Even if we assume we’re just going to pay out healthcare costs that match what we’re paying right now for Medicaid beneficiaries, we’re going to see costs [go] up. Who’s going to pay for that?

CARLSON: May I stop you there? So you’re saying those costs will go up? Those are just the costs of paying for the healthcare of illegal aliens.

HASKINS: That’s right, and that’s just the start. I mean this is a big invitation to the world, to billions of people around the world — come here to America, we’re gonna pay for your healthcare. What’s to stop busloads or trainloads or planeloads of people with serious ailments from coming to the United States legally or illegally, and for us to be treating these people?

I mean this is total madness, and that’s why basically no other country in the entire world does something like that, so yes this is a crazy proposal from the left.

And the third big proposal is a federal jobs guarantee: now this might seem tame compared to the other things that we just talked about, but this is an incredibly dangerous proposal.

Not only is it going to be very expensive — four trillion to $44 trillion, according to the American Action Forum over a ten-year period, depending on how many people are in it. But in addition it’s going to indirectly give the federal government power over the entire labor market because if they’re offering people a living wage, anyone a living wage which could be $15, it could be $20, it could be $25 an hour it means whatever it means to the Democratic Party candidates.

If you’re offering that then how is a small business or a medium-sized business supposed to compete with the federal government? You’re going to have millions leaving their jobs in the private sector to go work for the federal government to earn $20 an hour and free health care and free paid family leave and all sorts of other things to take jobs that don’t necessarily need to exist. I mean this is crazy stuff.

CARLSON: It is crazy, and they’re all for it too.

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