Citizenship ID Requirement Would Hurt Blacks

A measure pushed by two Georgia Republicans would require Medicaid applicants to show proof of US citizenship in order to receive benefits, a move critics say would hurt many low-income Americans who do not have passports or birth certificates.

The two lawmakers — Reps. Nathan Deal and Charlie Norwood — contend the provision is necessary to stem fraud in the Medicaid system by illegal immigrants and that it would simply require states to enforce the law.

The system “is open to a great deal of fraud” because most states allow people to declare that they are citizens when applying for Medicaid without showing any proof, said Deal. “It makes a mockery of the law,” he said.

But Leighton Ku, a senior fellow in health policy with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, said the proof of citizenship requirement was unnecessary and would hurt poor US citizens, especially African Americans. “A large number of people will find that they’ll loses their health insurance coverage,” he predicted.

Ku said elderly African-Americans might be adversely affected because they were born at a time when poverty and racial discrimination in hospital admissions, especially in the South, kept their mothers from giving birth at hospitals.

He cited a 1950 nationwide study that estimated about one-fifth of African-American births in 1939 and 1940 were not registered, which meant no birth certificate was ever issued.

“It brings up the possibility that a legacy of racial discrimination . . . still has repercussions that could affect their health coverage today,” Ku said.

In addition, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said many people who required Medicaid coverage — such as those affected by emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina, homeless people, and those with mental illness or who were severely disabled — may not be able to get help because they did not have passports or birth certificates in their possession.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups, wrote a letter last month to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) saying a proof of citizenship requirement for Medicaid would raise “significant civil rights concerns.”

source: Atlanta Journal Consitution, Jan. 19, 2006

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