RomneyCare subsidized care for illegal immigrants?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - The Los Angeles Times dropped a political bombshell on Mitt Romney today with its report on a key component of RomneyCare and its use by illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-subsidized care. Romney has attacked Rick Perry for providing a “magnet” for illegal immigration with tuition breaks for some students of illegal immigrants in Texas, so this has the potential for substantial backfire in the presidential race:

The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance.

Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized care at virtually no cost to them, regardless of their immigration status.

The program, widely supported in Massachusetts, drew little attention when Romney signed the trailblazing healthcare law. But now it could prove problematic for the Republican presidential hopeful, who has been attacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry for supporting educational aid for children of undocumented immigrants in Texas.

“We have to turn off the magnet of extraordinary government benefits,” Romney said at the recent Fox News-Google debate in Florida.