In the rush by the Obama administration to take over American health care, we should be asking how the more than 20 million illegal aliens in America fit in.

What about the illegals and government provided health insurance?

The answer depends on who you can hear. If you are a liberal, it may depend on how you “feel.”

Many readers have not heard about the Heller amendment to “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” one of several “reform bills.” It lacks language that would prevent illegal aliens who have escaped capture at our borders from accessing Obama’s proposed universal coverage.

Congressman Dean Heller, R-Nev., recently offered an amendment to the bill during the House Ways and Means Committee markup that would require the use of existing citizenship verification tools to determine eligibility for taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits.

The Heller amendment was defeated along party lines last week. How does that make you feel?

Welcome to one of the best kept secrets you will not hear much about from the president or the “mainstream media.” The same out of control government that has failed to enforce American immigration laws is trying to take charge of your health care and most members of the ruling party want to extend that universal coverage to illegal aliens.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than a million people were apprehended trying to enter the U.S. illegally in 2008. Optimistic estimates are that we catch one of every three or four illegal crossers.

As Roy Beck, executive director of the respected Washington D.C. pro-immigration control organization, NumbersUSA, notes, “It is the growth among the uninsured that is helping drive the political effort to change the health-care system. Previous studies have shown that illegal aliens account for nearly all of the growth in the uninsured in recent years.”

We are “importing the uninsured” writes James Edwards in National Review. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s government controlled and available to anyone who can unlawfully slip into the U.S.A. in search of a better life.

At least one Democrat has expressed concerns. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters in May that illegals would not be included. “We’re not going to cover undocumented aliens, undocumented workers,” Baucus told the Dallas Morning News. “That’s too politically explosive.”

Indeed. Not to mention expensive. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in 2004 California’s estimated cost of unreimbursed medical care was $1.4 billion. Texas estimated its cost at $850 million annually, and Arizona at $400 million.

Like most who study the illegal immigration crisis, Montana’s Baucus, a key Democrat in the health-care debate, likely understands that according to analyses by the Center for Immigration Studies and the U.S. Census Bureau, somewhere around 22 percent of the uninsured “Americans” are not Americans at all.

Here is where it gets even more “politically explosive.” Imagine that Congress and the president can somehow pull off the takeover of the American health care system and are forced to do it without initially including illegal aliens in their universal coverage.

We shouldn’t forget the next agenda for Obama and Congress. One of Obama’s campaign promises was to legalize the now largely unemployed black-market labor during his first year in office.

One well-funded group working hard to make this little known scam become reality is the radical open-borders National Council of La Raza (in English? “The National Council of The Race”).

Warnings given in recent La Raza seminars go like this: “you must go out into your communities, use words like ‘streamline,’ use phrases like ‘all workers’ and ‘all families,’ because if the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it.”

Indeed. Americans should rise up against “Obama-care.”

D.A. King is a resident of Marietta and president of the Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for enforcement of American immigration laws.