Don't even bother

Some of you may remember a post of mine a while back about caseworkers in Ohio taking it upon themselves to question people's immigration status based on their last name sounding "foreign" or not.

how do you decide whether you are going to question a person's citizenship status or not? I guess you could take on the onerous work of verifying every applicant's citizenship status, but how realistic is that in an already heavily overburdened highly bureaucratic system that the whole country is saying is eating up too much money as is?

Well, apparantly some in the Ohio legislature thought that was a good idea, and lo and behold, we now have HB 358, which seeks to impose citizenship verification on all people applying for Medicaid in Ohio. Apparantly, our legislature doesn't have much to do but figure out how to spend more money to make people less likely to get health insurance. But wait! you say... won't this save us money in the long run, what, with all those non-citizens trying to get health insurance for themselves on our dime? Well, considering that Ohio's non-citizen population tops out at about 2%, and in order to apply for yourself you must provide a social security number, you don't have a whole lot of folks clamouring to give the government a fake SS# so that they will be deemed eligible. But what you will have as a result of this bill is more people who are eligible for the program not being enrolled.

The main thing that keeps eligible people from getting enrolled in Medicaid is lack of turning in all the required documentation. This bill will add to those documentation requirements, effectively keeping eligible people off the rolls, while making more work for the caseworkers. Crazy Horse, looks like you're out of luck too.

Contact Rep. Wagoner, the guy from Toledo who introduced the bill. Let him know what you think about him spending your tax money to hate on folks. Here is his info:

Address:
77 S. High St
11th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Telephone: (614) 466-1731
Fax: (614) 644-9494
Email Address: district46@ohr.state.oh.us