The president admits that the undocumented immigrants do not qualify for
no health benefit.

Raleigh, North Carolina. - Once again the President Barack Obama took the topic of the reform to the health system out of the capital of the nation. While some legislators were discussing how to agree so that the reform likes to all the parts, Obama was exhibiting straight before the voters his arguments in favor of his proposal.

The people worry and want answers. The reports indicate that every 30 seconds someone presents a bankruptcy request like result of problems related to the health. And worse still, approximately 20.000 persons die every year because they do not have health insurance. Of them, approximately 13.000 would have lived through decades if they had had insurance. Last week, in a public assembly in the higher institute of learning Broughton, of Raleigh, Obama warned the Americans about the dangers for not doing anything.

I sat down with the president for an exclusive interview shortly after the event and we start by speaking about the most polemic aspect of the reform to the health system. I asked whom would pay for the plan if he is not the taxpayer. “It will cost a million million dollars during more than 10 years, this would be hundred billion dollars per year, and close to two third parts of the above mentioned costs we might take them of money that we are spending at present in the system, which is not being spent learnedly. It goes to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. We can take this money, help the people and in general terms this can be paid for itself during a period of 10 years”, it affirmed.

The president admits that the Latin Americans are the group who is most affected by the absence of medical insurance. In fact, without insurance of health, any more than one third part they are Latin to 45 million North Americans, a disproportionate quantity if we think that we are 17 per cent of the population. Between the children without insurance, 40 per cent they are Latin. Of another side, the costs of medical attention attributed to the Hispanics are disproportionately lower than those of other groups, and more than half of the Latin Americans without medical insurance pays of his pocket the expenses of medical care.

The National Council of The Race thinks that a reform cannot exist to the system of health that does not include the undocumented immigrants, the legal residents and the immigrant children.

I asked the president how one handles this matter in his proposal.

“ One of the achievements of that I am prouder in the first six months is not only the expansion of the insurance of health for the children but also to assure us that the legal immigrant children have access to the same one. That means that now there enjoy the health insurance million children who otherwise would not qualify”, he said to me. “When it is a question of legal residents we want to find ways of which they could have access to the services of prevention and to the services of well-being, obtaining regular treatments”, added the president.
Nevertheless, the undocumented immigrants do not qualify for any health benefit. “Undocumented workpeople who are here illegally. we want to do a wide migratory reform so that they have a route towards the citizenship. But until they do it we cannot be rewarding them with any of the benefits that frankly cost a significant money and there would be many resistance when persons who are citizens of the USA or legal residents, do not obtain services that would be available for undocumented workpeople”.

It is understandable that it would be politically risky to include undocumented immigrants in any reform program to the health system. We have seen in the last years how the fortitudes are warmed when one speaks about undocumented persons. Nevertheless, if one of the principal targets is to diminish the costs related to the care of health offering better medical prevention services, then non-including them will be counter-productive. Half of the Latin Americans without medical insurance are undocumented immigrants, and if they fall ill and cannot receive treatment, they end in the emergency rooms that cannot deny attention to them and that are much costlier than a visit to the doctor. It is another case in which the politics

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.