Posted on 07/26/2005 7:58:16 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
A new national study suggests that immigrants in the United States receive about half as much medical care as their American counterparts.
U.S.-born residents averaged $2,564 in annual health care costs compared with per capita immigrant care that averaged $1,139, about 55 percent less, according to the study published Monday in the American Journal of Public Health.
The study concluded that the spending disparity refuted the notion that immigrants were "a substantial burden" on the U.S. health-care system.
It estimated that immigrant care accounted for $39.5 billion, or almost 8 percent of U.S. health-care spending in 1998, the year that was analyzed. Immigrants made up 10 percent of the U.S. population in 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
However, Dallas health officials said Monday that there was another way to look at the numbers. The officials wondered whether the lower cost of health care for immigrants signaled that they were having trouble accessing medical services.
"You can explain this disparity as a lack of access due to language, financial and insurance barriers," said Dr. Ron Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Parkland Memorial Hospital, which services a large immigrant population.
"There's nothing to celebrate in this study," he said.
Dr. Michele Smith, who treats immigrants at the Community Health Clinic in East Dallas, said it was not uncommon to diagnose more advanced diseases in immigrants, who waited too long to see a doctor.
"We see women with cervical and breast cancer who haven't had Pap smears and mammograms" that could have caught the disease earlier, she said. "Our patients are from Mexico, Africa and the various Asian countries. Many of the women in their 60s have never had these basic tests."
Dr. David Buhner, medical director of the Dallas County health department, noted that the lack of insurance probably was the main reason immigrants had such trouble getting into the U.S. system.
"The ticket to access is health insurance, and if you don't have it, you can't get in," he said.
*snip*
However, immigrants were broadly defined as anyone born outside the U.S., including people who had moved to this country decades ago.
"It included people from Scandinavia who've been here 20 years and are citizens now," Dr. Buhner said. "There would probably be even a greater disparity in health-care spending if it had looked at just undocumented workers. Their barriers to care are associated with being poor and uninsured."
The study found that Asian immigrants had health-care expenses similar to U.S.-born residents, while Hispanics and blacks suffered the largest disparities in such spending.
Dr. Anderson noted that the longer immigrants resided in the United States, the more likely they were to become insured. About 25 percent of Texans are uninsured, one of the highest rates in the nation.
*snip*
"Our study lays to rest the myth that expensive care for immigrants is responsible for our nation's high health costs," she said. "The truth is, immigrants get far less care than other Americans. Our data indicates that many immigrants are actually helping to subsidize care for the rest of us."
The study's authors presented it as the first nationwide analysis of immigrant health-care expenditures, basing it on data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It considered data collected from 21,241 people who took part in the 1998 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.
Statistics are just like silly putty, aren't they?
Could it be because they are here ILLEGALLY?
What "notion"? The "notion" that I've come across is that illegal immigrants place a burden on the healthcare system, which is why Congress felt compelled recently to bail out a lot of border hospitals that were being swamped by illegals.
But of course, this being the MSM, they (along with a certain "banned or suspended" illegal alien apologist here on this forum) love to pretend that the "illegal" distinction simply doesn't exist.
There. That portrays the truth much better.
Fact 1: If an illegal alien walks into an ER, complaining of a condition or pain (through his state-provided interpreter), he is treated for it and never billed. Ever.
Fact 2: If I go to an ER, complaining of a condition or pain, I am treated for it and billed. Continually. And if I don't pay, I'll likely end up a defendant.
So. Explain to me again how that system is unfair to illegals?
The article lumps legal immigrants, that have been here for decades, with the illegals for their statistics. That means the drain from illegals is diluted by the contributions from the legals. The study has no meaningful results. It's BS.
Ok. This sends the BS meter off that charts.
that=the
Wait till all the illegals of the last ten years get old and are eligible for Medicare...............Costs have just begun to escalate.
Speaking of silly, the above quote is a totally nonsensical assertion. The fact that the immigrants consume less health-care than native born has nothing to do with whether or not they are a substantial burden on the health-care system. The health-care system loves providing health-care and the more the better. It is an industry after all. But like all industries, it likes to be paid.
The appropriate measure of whether or not immigrants are burdening the system or not is not the amount of health-care they consume but the percentage of the consumed health-care that they (or their insurance) pays for rather than is provided to them for free and paid for by either taxpayers, or insured people via higher premiums. I would suspect that immigrants as a group are far more likely to be uninsured.
The study would be far more useful if it broke out legal from illegal immigrants. Whenever studies fail to make this distinction the purpose is almost always to deceive because the huge adverse costs of illegal immigrants can partially be disguised by being diluted with the more successful legal immigrants.
Wait till all the illegals of the last ten years get old and are eligible for Medicare.........
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You can blame our Washington government for this and the atrocities that go along with government subsidizing of CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!! Forced down our throats and out of our pockets, the Washington elitists do not give a damn about ANYTHING BUT VOTES!!! No matter what the cost, no matter what the destruction, no matter anything!!
ping
The writer of this article is just plain silly, and this study does not take into account the number of Americans with no health care at all.
So if any immigrants are getting free health care, that would be one too many.
Does anybody really give a damn about this?? Frankly I don't care if my next door neighbor or my brothers have less health care than me.
Here's a novel concept: if you get a service, pay for it
That's effectively but not literally true. They're billed...but the bill generally goes to a bogus address. Here's what happens.
After treatment, the patient sits down with an admissions clerk to arrange payment. After ascertaining that the patient has no insurance, they are put in for the State's (Arizona) indigent insurance program. If they fail to qualify for that, they are turned over to what our hospital calls 'Cash Apply'. That is, they will receive a bill in the mail and be required to pay for services. They give a bogus address, the bill goes into the dead letter office, and they received free health care.
It happens all the time, and it has gotten so bad that our Regional Health Center (RHC) is in danger of closing. That will be catastrophic, since ours is the only OB ward in a county the size of Connecticut. And using the military treatment facility on Ft. Huachuca is out of the question...they have long since passed off most of their inpatient care to the RHC. We even have active duty soldiers sent downtown for sick call when the Troop Medical Clinics on post are full...
I hear what you're saying but some of these people have never been immunized against tuberculosis, hepatitis, and they are working handling raw meat and raw fish which is then shipped all over the country.
Believe me. I know what happens. One of our businesses is medical billing.
""Our study lays to rest the myth that expensive care for immigrants is responsible for our nation's high health costs," she said. "The truth is, immigrants get far less care than other Americans. Our data indicates that many immigrants are actually helping to subsidize care for the rest of us.""
How can people that are poor and uninsured subsidize the costs of health care for the rest of us?
That statement is absurd.
The problem is that taxpayers and other patients are the ones paying the health care costs for the uninsured illegal immigrants. That is unquestionably driving up health care costs and placing a burden on taxpayers to provide benefits for people who have no legal right to be here receiving them.
They're also using 7 year old data when health care has been rising in cost much more rapidly more recently than that.
Useless statistics based on old data.
The conclusion they reach is obviously not even supported by the data they have.
I would expect that those who are in the country illegally aren't able to afford health care as well, nor can the get access to it as easily. That's because they are here illegally. They should be deported to their home country and get health care there, not in the US.
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