Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) said on MSNBC yesterday that the immigration provisions in the health care bill “are enough to say I can’t support this bill.”
That would be a big blow to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Gutierrez voted ‘yes’ on the House health care bill last year. Switching to ‘no’ on the Senate bill — as Guitierrez suggested he would — would take a key vote away from Pelosi as she tries to hang onto enough votes for the House to pass the Senate bill.
Guitierrez, who was heading to the White House after his interview with Chuck Todd, expressed displeasure that undocumented immigrants would be barred from buying health care on a new exchange. He also worried that the Senate wanted to exclude legal permanent residents for the first five years.
Todd asked if those two issues were enough for Gutierrez to say he couldn’t support the health care reform bill.
“They are enough to say I can’t support this bill,” the congressman said.
Here’s the video:
Late Update: The Gutierrez team has sent over a statement from the congressman confirming his ‘no’ vote.
At this time, I am a ‘no’ vote on health care. It’s no secret that I have been critical of proposals that would exclude our nation’s hardworking immigrants from the health care exchange, and I would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to vote for any measure that denies undocumented workers health care purchased with their own dollars.
If we bar the immigrant community from buying private insurance with their own money, we relegate them to emergency room care at the highest cost to taxpayers and deny them the important opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to a healthier America. Immigrants are prepared to pay into the system, and excluding them from the private marketplace runs counter to the very goals of health care: containing costs, increasing the use of preventative care and streamlining the health delivery system.
