Dem candidates have health care priorities wrong

It’s official. Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez confirms the party fully endorses free health care for illegal immigrants. That puts illegal immigrants ahead of veterans struggling to qualify for civilian care, middle-class working stiffs priced out of Obamacare and baby boomers facing the likelihood of Medicare cuts.

At the second Democratic presidential debate, all 10 candidates on the stage flung up their hands when asked whether they’d cover illegal immigrants.

Not one of the debate moderators went on to ask: How much will it cost, and who will pay for it?

The costs would be huge. According to Pew Foundation researchers, there were 10.5 million illegal immigrants in the nation in 2017. In 2018, Yale University and MIT demographers estimated there were double that.

If the entire illegal immigrant population were enrolled in Medicaid, the tab would range from a whopping $84 billion a year (10.5 million times $8,015 per person Medicaid cost) to more than double that, $176 billion. But that estimate needs to be pared to reflect the millions of illegal immigrants who work and already get insurance through an employer. Covering uninsured illegal immigrants is likely to cost $40 billion to $80 billion a year.

That cost could explode if Democrats push through their openborders agenda. The front-runners on the stage that night — Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders — said they would stop prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants except those guilty of committing serious crimes. In the Democrats’ view, sneaking into the country should be a civil violation, like getting a parking ticket. With no border enforcement, the number of illegal immigrants is likely to soar, pushing up the cost of their health care.

None of the candidates gushing about health care for illegal immigrants as a human right showed the same ardor for veterans’ health care. For years, the VA has been embroiled in scandals over vets dying while waiting for medical care. Still, Congress is nickel-anddiming the money it spends to allow vets to see civilian doctors and get other civilian medical services. The total in the proposed 2020 budget is $8.9 billion, less than half of what advocacy groups claim is needed to relieve the deadly backlog at VA hospitals.

But Democrats are willing to spend at least four times that much on health insurance for illegal immigrants.

Worse, Congress is appropriating a paltry $1.8 billion to help homeless vets. Of course, politicians find these comparisons inconvenient. The Democratic candidates would like you to believe no one has to go without in order to fund health care for illegal immigrants.

But the ugly reality became obvious in California this month, when the Democratic-dominated state Legislature voted to fund health coverage for illegal immigrants up to age 25. How to pay for it? Democratic lawmakers are slapping a hefty tax — up to $3,252 — on people who go without health insurance, even if they’re uninsured because they can’t afford it.

The real health insurance crisis in this country isn’t about illegal immigrants. It’s about the middle class. The Affordable Care Act added millions of mostly poor people to the insurance rolls. But the same law is driving premiums so high that middle-class people are priced out. Roughly 5 million people are going without coverage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Dems eyeing the White House never mention the plight of uninsured middle-class families. The message is clear: Illegal immigrant lives matter, but vets’ lives and middle-class lives not so much.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.