In an interview with CNN, Harris admitted that she wants to provide taxpayer-funded health care, along with education and other benefits, to individuals unlawfully present in this country.

Back in January, jaws dropped when presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) admitted at a CNN town hall that she wanted to take away the existing health arrangements of hundreds of millions of Americans. Now we know one reason why.

In another interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Harris admitted that she wants to provide taxpayer-funded health care, along with education and other benefits, to individuals unlawfully present in this country. But as even Hillary Clinton recognized, doing so wouldn’t just cost precious taxpayer dollars. It will also encourage individuals to migrate to the United States for “free” health care.

In the interview, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Harris about language in Section 102(a) of the House and Senate single-payer bills, which would make health coverage available to all individuals present in the United States, regardless of their legal status. When questioned whether she supported granting benefits “to people who are in this country illegally,” Harris responded unequivocally that she does: “Let me just be very clear about this. I am opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education or public health, period.”

Compare Harris’ response to the words of none other than Hillary Clinton. When testifying before Congress about her health-care task force’s plan in September 1993, Clinton said she opposed extending benefits to “illegal aliens,” because it would encourage additional migration to the United States:

We do not think the comprehensive health care benefits should be extended to those who are undocumented workers and illegal aliens. We do not want to do anything to encourage more illegal immigration into this country. We know now that too many people come in for medical care, as it is. We certainly don’t want them having the same benefits that American citizens are entitled to have.

Clinton may not want illegally present foreign citizens having the same benefits that American citizens would be entitled to under single payer, but Harris does.

The problems sparked by single payer would reach far beyond undocumented foreigners living in this country. To wit, both the House and Senate single-payer bills prohibit individuals from traveling “for the sole purpose of obtaining health care” from the new government-run system. But note the specific wording: It only prohibits foreign citizens from traveling for the sole purpose of receiving health care.

This extremely permissive language would give federal officials fits. So long as anyone states some other purpose—visiting the U.S. Capitol, for instance, or seeing a Broadway play—for his or her visit, the language in the bills would make it impossible to deny these foreign citizens health care funded by U.S. taxpayers.

Provisions like these would not just cost American taxpayer dollars, it would also cost the U.S. health-care system. Growth in benefit tourism would greatly increase demand for health care (as would many other provisions in a single-payer system). Because of this greater demand, American citizens would have an increasingly difficult time accessing care. Foreign residents may not like waiting for care either, but individuals from developing countries lacking access to advanced health treatments might find queues for care in this country far preferable to no care at all in their native land.

Don’t Insult Americans’ Intelligence

In the same CNN interview that aired Sunday, Harris also tried, albeit unconvincingly, to “clean up” her January comments about “mov[ing] on” from private insurance. She claimed to Tapper that single-payer legislation would not fully eliminate private insurance. However, host Tapper rightly pointed out that supplemental insurance could only cover the very few services that the government-run plan would not, like cosmetic surgery.

Tapper also asked Harris about the unions that have health plans that they like now, not least because they gave up pay raises in prior years to keep rich health benefits. Harris could only concede that “it’s a legitimate concern which must be addressed.” I’m sure that those individuals facing the loss of their health coverage feel better, because Harris has officially dubbed their concern “legitimate.”

Note to Harris: Legal hair-splitting about whether single payer bars all health insurance, or just virtually all health insurance, and patronizing constituents fearful of losing their coverage, doesn’t seem like the best way to win support for a government takeover of health care. Perhaps next time she gives an interview with Tapper, she will finally have an answer for why she wants to give benefits to individuals unlawfully present, while taking coverage away from nearly 300 million Americans.