1 out of every 4 uninsured people in the United States is an
illegal immigrant.
PART Three of a 5 Part Full News Report
Lawsuits brought by several states against the federal government seeking reimbursement
for the cost of handling the massive influx of illegal aliens that federal authorities had
failed to contain, were dismissed on the grounds that the issue was a "political
question" and not one for the courts.
The Sinking Ship: Uncontrolled Immigration and the U.S. Healthcare System
America's health care system is in a serious crisis. Costs and insurance premiums are
skyrocketing, the number of the uninsured is rising rapidly, providers are reducing
staffing and services and increasing rates, and hospitals are closing or facing
bankruptcy. As states cut their health care budgets to try to make ends meet, high rates
of illegal immigration are straining the health care system to the breaking point.
One out of every four uninsured people in the United States is an
illegal immigrant.
When the 3.5 million immigrants receiving insurance through publicly funded
Medicaid are factored in, almost half of immigrants have either no insurance or
have it provided to them at taxpayers' expense.
Non-reimbursed costs also get shifted to patients who do have health insurance, thus
increasing the cost of care for everyone.
In some hospitals, as much as two-thirds of total operating costs are for uncompensated
care for illegal aliens.
Federal laws requiring hospitals to treat anyone who enters an emergency room regardless
of ability to pay have created an unfunded mandate for states and localities to fund
health care for non- U.S. citizens and illegal aliens. Yet at the same time, lack of
enforcement of federal laws against illegal immigration has led to a pool of nine to
eleven million illegal aliens in the U.S.and state and local taxpayers are being forced to
foot the bill. Although immigration law enforcement is a federal responsibility, most
hospitals receive little or no reimbursement for the care to immigrants that the federal
government mandates that they provide.
Lack of insurance leads many immigrants to use hospital emergency departments—the
most expensive source of health care—as their primary care provider. Emergency room
visits increased by 20 percent in the last decade. The problem has become so out of
control that some Mexican ambulance companies are now instructing their drivers to drive
uninsured patients across the border to the United States, where they will receive free
treatment.
The escalating burden incurred by hospitals and other health facilities for the
uncompensated treatment of aliens is driven by both rampant illegal immigration and a
legal immigration system that allows large numbers of people to gain permanent residence
despite the fact that they are unlikely to be working in jobs with health care coverage or
have personal resources sufficient to pay for health services.
At the same time that Washington is neglecting to pick up the tab for aliens whom it has
failed to prevent from settling here illegally, the problem is exacerbated by state and
local policies that grant costly benefits to people who violate immigration law.
At a time when the country is struggling to provide affordable care to millions of
uninsured residents, President Bush's immigration proposal would bring in hundreds of
thousands more uninsured and officially sanction a massive illegal population already here
and already draining health care funds from struggling communities.
"We're running an HMO for illegal immigrants and if we keep it up, we're going to
bankrupt the county. We have a $350 million debt as a result of these people receiving
medical treatment illegally," says Los Angeles county supervisor Michael Antonovich.
Our immigration policies have played a significant role in creating our national health
care crisis, in which more than 41 million Americans lack basic health insurance. Our
immigration system literally imports poverty. Immigrants are two and a half times as
likely to lack health insurance as natives.
Thirty-three percent of immigrants- one in three have no insurance (compared to 13 percent
of the native-born). One out of every four uninsured people in the United States is an
immigrant, show Census data. (This is a dramatically disproportionate share, as immigrants
comprise 11.5 percent of the total population.)
When the National Association of Counties surveyed its members in 2002, 67 percent of
counties cited an increase in immigration as a cause of the rise in uncompensated health
care expenses and all of the responses indicated that newly arrived immigrants are among
the predominant users of uncompensated health care.
Why are immigrants disproportionately uninsured? Because of illegal immigration and
because U.S. immigration policy slants toward admitting relatives rather than immigrants
with needed workplace skills, our immigration system literally imports poverty. Sixteen
percent of all immigrant households live below the poverty level, and one out of every
five households of non-citizens is poor (versus eleven percent poverty among native
households). The median household income for immigrant households is 13 percent lower than
that of native households, and, for the households of non-citizens, it is 23 percent
lower.
In immigration-heavy states, the effects are even more pronounced. Nearly three-fifths of
all poor children in California are immigrants, and the poverty rate of the state's
immigrant children (29 percent) is significantly higher than that of its native children
(17 percent).
Because of the uncompensated expense of treating uninsured patients, communities with high
rates of uninsured residents "are more likely to reduce hospital services, divert
public resources away from disease prevention and surveillance programs, and reallocate
tax dollars so that they can pay for uncompensated medical care," according to an
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences report.
In 2001, public funds made up for up to 85 percent of the $34-$38 billion shortfall in
unreimbursed expenses incurred by the uninsured. The problem is on the rise: Immigrants
(legal and illegal) who arrived between 1994 and 1998 and their children accounted for 59
percent (2.7 million people) of the growth in the size of the uninsured population since
1993.
News 4- Recommendations and Solutions for the
Medical Crisis |
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