In the now-desperate rush by the Obama administration to take over American health care, we should be asking how the millions of illegal aliens in America fit in.

What about the illegals and government-provided health coverage?

The answer depends on who you can hear.

Many readers have not heard about Georgia Rep. Nathan Deal's amendment to a version of "the health care reform bill" (HR 3200). The bill lacks language that would prevent illegal aliens from accessing Obama's proposed universal coverage.

Using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, Deal's amendment would require states to verify an individual's citizenship status before automatically enrolling them in the government-run option. The horror. The amendment was narrowly defeated 29-28. The Democrats win.

Welcome to one of the best-kept secrets you will not hear much about from the "mainstream media." The same out-of-control government that has failed to secure American borders or enforce American immigration laws is trying to take charge of your health care - and most members of the ruling party want to extend that national health insurance to millions of these victims of geography.

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. Do the math.

As Roy Beck, executive director of the respected Washington 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 is government-controlled - and officially available to anyone who can unlawfully slip into the U.S. in search of a better life. Not exactly a deterrent to future illegal immigration.

Congressional Budget Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee and warned lawmakers that the proposed "legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs."

At least one Democrat has expressed concerns. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters in May 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."

Like most who study the illegal immigration crisis, 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. They are non-citizens, many here in violation of our American immigration laws.

Something else you will not hear: One well-funded separatist 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").

La Raza seminars offer instructions like: "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.

D.A. King, a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration, is the president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for enforcement of American immigration laws. The organization's Web site is (http://www.thedustininmansociety.org.)