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Healthcare | | | |
Immigrants are often uninsured and
underinsured. Forty-three percent of
non-citizens under 65 have no health
insurance. That means there are 9.4
million uninsured immigrants, a majority
of whom are in the country illegally,
constituting 15 percent of the total
uninsured in the nation in the
mid-1990s.1 The cost of the
medical care of these uninsured
immigrants is passed onto the taxpayer,
and strains the financial stability of
the health care community. | | | |
Another problem is immigrants’ use of
hospital and emergency services rather
than preventative medical care. For
example, utilization rate of hospitals
and clinics by illegal aliens (29
percent) is more than twice the rate of
the overall U.S. population (11
percent).2 | | | |
As a result, the costs of medical care
for immigrants are staggering. The
estimated cost of un-reimbursed medical
care in 2004 in California was about
$1.4 billion per year. In Texas, the
estimated cost was about $.85 billion,
and in Arizona the comparable estimate
was $.4 billion per year.3 | | | |
One of the frequent costs to U.S.
taxpayers is delivery of babies to
illegal alien mothers. A California
study put the number of these anchor
baby deliveries in the state in 1994 at
74,987, at a cost of $215 million. At
that time, those births constituted 36
percent of all Medi-Cal births, and they
have grown now to substantially more
than half or the annual Medi-Cal budget.
In 2003, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies
born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s
maternity ward were anchor babies.
Medical in 2003 had 760,000 illegal
alien beneficiaries, up from 2002, when
there were 470,000.4 | |
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1 Employee Benefit Research Group
study, January 1995. “The study
suggests the very high degree to
which that population [illegal
aliens] is contributing to
uncompensated costs.” EBRI President
Dallas Salisbury, Washington
Post, January 25, 1995. |
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2 Assessment of Potential Impact of
Undocumented Person on National Health
Reform, National Health Foundation,
April 14, 1993 | | | |
3 See
FAIR publications.
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4 Madeleine Peiner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.
“Illegal Aliens and American Medicine,”
Journal of American Physicians and
Surgeons, Spring 2005. |
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