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Newborns bear brunt of HHS rule

As the Bush administration moves immigration reform into the pediatric ward, babies now get to pay the price. Though the Constitution considers anyone born in the United States to be a citizen, the Department of Health and Human Services has added an astonishing bureaucratic postscript.

"A child born in the U.S. to an illegal alien mother," HHS writes, "... is not a deemed newborn."

"Deemed newborn" is regulator-speak for deciding which babies get tossed out of hospitals, and it is thoroughly indecent. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which opposed the new Medicaid eligibility rule, described the inevitable medical consequence in four words: "Children will be hurt."

The change defies common sense. Under a 22-year-old Medicaid law, illegal immigrants are covered for emergency hospital treatment that includes childbirth. The resulting newborns, "deemed" or not, were then immediately eligible for follow-up care for at least a year - care that can range from treatment for illness at birth to routine checkups and immunizations.

In its response to a new budget reduction law that requires more proof from immigrants who seek Medicaid health services, HHS decided that these babies need paperwork, too. The newly required documentation would, at a minimum, delay treatment. And yet the forms would provide information HHS already knows.

As California Health and Human Services Secretary S. Kimberly Belshe puts it: "By virtue of being born in the United States, a child is a U.S. citizen. What more proof does the federal government need?"

Congress may be incapable of developing a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the 12-million illegal immigrants who live within our borders and those who are still coming. But surely, in this pitched debate over border fences and employer crackdowns and earned amnesty, Congress can agree on one point: Kicking newborns off Medicaid will not make America any safer.

[Last modified November 14, 2006, 01:52:32]