A well-oiled machine

Those new rules regarding illegal immigrants are having their expected unintended consequences.

A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship....

Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have all reported declines in enrollment and traced them to the new federal requirement, which comes just as state officials around the country are striving to expand coverage through Medicaid and other means.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways, for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.

Or just maybe they are intended. Because we can expect that this will be used as evidence of the need for those handy-dandy RFID chips that seem to have police state apparatchiks so giddy. And, of course, booting tens of thousands of Americans off the Medicaid roles certainly will help reduce the deficit or at least free up bunches of money to transfer to defense contractors.