WASHINGTON: An Administration plan to issue “health security cards” to all citizens and legal residents would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving benefits under the proposed health care overhaul, a senior White House official said August 15.
The Justice Department must first study the Constitutional implications of such a move before a final decision is made and it is introduced to Congress.
Civil liberties groups have long argued that such cards would infringe on the privacy of citizens and facilitate greater Government Surveillance of individuals. The concern that the health care cards could become de facto national identification cards is shared by several officials in the White House and Justice Department.
Proposals for national identification cards have gained Currency in recent months as concerns about the economic impact of illegal immigration in Border States like California have grown.
In an interview published Friday in The Los Angeles Times, President Clinton said the idea of creating a tamperproof national identification card “ought to be examined.” But in the same interview, he also noted that “a lot of the immigration groups and advocates have said that any kind of identification card like that sort of smacks of Big Brotherism.”
Robert O.Boorstin, the special assistant to the President for policy coordination, said Sunday that illegal immigrants would continue to be eligible for some Medicaid benefits and would receive attention from public health centers in the fight against communicable disease like measles, under the health plan the Administration is scheduled to make public in the fall.
Administration officials involved in health care said in interviews in The New York Times in April that the security cards would be implemented as a tangible symbol of an individual’s enrollment in the universal health insurance program, just as a Social Security card demonstrates that a person has an account calculating his accrued Social Security benefits. Courtesy of the New York Times.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 20, 1993
