No, Rep. Joe Wilson, You Lie

Now that the brouhaha has died down over the juvenile delivery of Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC, Bluffton) “You Lie!” epithet at the President during his address to Congress last week, I’d like to address the substance of Wilson’s charge that the President was dishonest in selling his plan. I think this is the more serious issue to focus on, because once we look at the plain facts, we see that Rep. Wilson, not President Obama, actually lied that night.

Wilson’s shriek was in response to, of all things, the President’s claim that his health care plan would not result in new benefits to illegal immigrants. Ironically, this should be one of the least controversial claims the President has made about his health care plan. The non-partisan factcheck.org called Wilson “wrong.” Probably as a bulwark against such smears, the House version of the bill explicitly includes a section that reads, “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully in the United States.” Similar language is being drafted in the Senate.

But more fundamentally, if we take a look at what the bill actually does, it’s easy to see that there’s no way for illegal immigrants to get a free ride on health care. At its core, the Obama health care plan does four things:

Reform. The health care bill provides a number of important protections for people who buy health care in the private market. Most importantly, it prevents insurance providers from refusing to provide coverage to individuals based on pre-existing conditions, and from dropping patients from their insurance once they incur costs. These are protections already enjoyed by people who get tax-subsidized insurance through their employer. These protections would simply be extended to people who buy insurance individually, thereby cutting costs while allowing more people to get coverage. True, there are illegal residents who currently buy health insurance on the private market, and these reforms might make it easier for more illegal residents to buy private health insurance. But since this is actually a cost-cutting measure, it’s hard to see how citizen residents, who will overwhelmingly be the beneficiaries of such reforms are in any way impaired by them.

A Public Option. This is another crucial cornerstone of reform. Rather than simply regulate the most egregious and wasteful practices of the private insurance industry, this element introduces competition by giving Americans a choice of getting their coverage from either the private market or a government-run provider. Contrary to common misconception, the public option itself will be self-sufficient. People will have to buy into the system at actual cost, meaning that revenues from purchasers will cover the cost of their care. Arguing that a public option will force citizens to pay for the health care of illegal aliens is like arguing that the post office forces citizens to pay for the cost of their mail, even though illegal residents have to pay for stamps just like the rest of us.

Mandates. The importance of this prong and its effect on the overall plan is perhaps the least well understood of all. Under the Obama plan, all persons would be required to purchase health insurance, either through a public option or the private market. True, it’s tough to enforce an insurance mandate on people whose very presence in the country is technically illegal—I can vouch for this from my own professional experience working with illegal immigrants who lack mandated auto insurance. But it’s hard to see how illegal residents who benefit from a mandate—in fact; it might be one more requirement that makes it more difficult for illegal residents to escape detection. Mandates are important because they prevent healthy people from gaming the system by not paying for insurance and then forcing the taxpayer to pick up the tab if they need expensive emergency room care. However, a mandate also necessitates the costly portion of the plan: health care subsidies.

Subsidies. It’s difficult to mandate that all people buy health insurance, which is expensive, without giving them any means of paying for it. Low-income workers and the unemployed would probably have no way of complying with the mandate, thus making it toothless. Therefore, the Obama plan authorizes credits to people who can’t afford insurance so that they can buy it either in the public market or through a public option. This is where the price tag of the plan comes is, and it is admittedly a big bill. But, as stated above, you have to be a lawful citizen to qualify for any credits, so there’s no way that any of this price tag could go toward subsidizing the care of illegal residents.

Once we see what the plan actually would do, it’s obvious how patently absurd Rep. Wilson’s claim is. And yet, this claim that the Obama plan would be a big giveaway to illegal immigrants has remarkable salience among conservatives and even some independents. How could that be? My theory is that this is just another ugly manifestation of old-fashioned racism. There are a lot of people in this country whose hostility to illegal (read: Mexican) immigration is so hard-wired and irrational that any appeal to reason simply doesn’t registered because they’re so committed to seeing the brown people as the villains. And that creates a very receptive audience for Rep. Wilson’s brand of lies.

There is good news, though. People are committed to health care reform, or perhaps to the simpler concepts of honesty and decorum, are making a meaningful effort to democratically remove Rep. Wilson from office. Since the speech last week, Joe Wilson’s Democratic opponent for 2010, Rob Miller, has raised over $920,000 online. (That’s almost half a million per word.) To put that in context, Miller raised far more money in one week alone than he did in all of 2008, the first time he challenged Wilson.

That’s a lot of money, and it makes Miller, a US Marine Iraq war veteran and small business owner a major player in 2010. Miller held Wilson to an impressively narrow margin with a lot less money in 2008, and the fact that he through his hat into the ring already for a rematch meant that there was someplace tangible for this defeat-Joe-Wilson funding to go. Wilson can’t undo this kind of a moneybomb, meaning that this is likely going to be a dogfight of an election right down to Election Day. I’ll be supporting Miller and his support for health care reform and his lack of deeply ingrained odious hostility toward immigrants.

I thought President Obama gave an excellent speech last week, one that significantly increases the chances of passing meaningful health care reform. And I’m willing to bet that the next time President Obama gives a speech before Congress, Joe Wilson sits in the back, smiles, has a Coke and shuts the f--- up. Call it a hunch.