Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” 2020 presidential hopeful, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said her health care plan proposal would cover undocumented immigrants.
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about the debates this week. One question to many of your colleagues and competitors was whether their health care plan would cover undocumented immigrants. Would your plan do that?
KLOBUCHAR: As part of comprehensive immigration reform, we must move forward on making sure that people have health care. California just did that with Medicaid, and I am supportive of that but I think on the national basis, as we go forward, get immediate health care for people, yes. But as part of making this actually happen, you need comprehensive immigration reform. And one thing that was missing from the NBC debate, actually, that I hope we can discuss, is that we have a humanitarian crisis at the border right now. But we also did not talk about the other immigrants that are here. The people who are here on temporary legal status, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of people that are legally here that are at risk or are being deported that work in our nursing homes and our hospitals. We have got dreamers, two million of them, that came to this country through no fault of their own and are a major part of our economy. So, we need to have an economic discussion about this, as well as a border discussion–
BRENNAN: Okay, so–
KLOBUCHAR: –and that’s why I want to move forward, as president, with comprehensive immigration reform.
BRENNAN: So that was a yes? That your health care plan would cover–
KLOBUCHAR: That was a yes–
BRENNAN: Okay.
KLOBUCHAR: –for immediate health care needs, but as far as other benefits I think we need to- that has got to be a part of the discussion of comprehensive immigration reform.
BRENNAN: Okay, because they were excluded from the existing Obamacare law.
KLOBUCHAR: That is correct. Yes.
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