It isn’t often that I agree with the Center for American Progress, but the CAP report to which the Health Affairs blog links today is absolutely right about the health care impact of immigrants. The report debunks the widely held belief that immigrants constitute a disproportionate burden on the American health care system.
These misconceptions feed a perception that one of the biggest reasons for our nation’s failing health care system is the growth of immigration … These myths need to be subjected to the bright light of objective analysis to better inform critical policy making decisions on health care reform and immigration reform moving forward.
I work at a rural hospital surrounded by farms whose primary source of labor is the immigrant community. I have never seen any evidence supporting the proposition that this community utilizes medical services, Medicaid, or charity care at a higher rate than any other segment of the population. And this is consistent with my experience at another facility with similar patient demographics.
It’s time for nativist politicians and media types to stop using health care as a pretext for the promotion of their anti-immigrant program.
Comments 3
We live in a small town, small town hospital. We have a small community of illegal immigrants. My hubby says that these illegals almost ALWAYS pay their hospital bills. I hear from many readers at Right Truth who have a different story from their own communities. Different communities, different situations.
I look for the immigration bill to be back in the next few weeks. I’m not against immigration or immigrants, no matter what country they come from.
My main concern is terrorism. I want the borders secure to keep terrorists out. It’s impossible to know who is entering the country the way things are now.
Posted 09 Jun 2007 at 12:49 pm ¶There are certainly legitimate concerns over which reasonable people can differ. I just get tired of health care being used to dress up a nativist agenda.
Posted 09 Jun 2007 at 3:15 pm ¶Most illegal folks I have met pay for their health insurance which is usually not easy for them to afford but they do because most of them come from cultures where receiving charity is ‘embarrasing’. There’s a level of cultural understanding that prevent many folks from receiving anything for free, even when they can’t afford to pay.
Posted 11 Jun 2007 at 12:18 pm ¶Also let us not forget that we, as a country, are taking advantage of illegal immigrant labor - which is not well paid and is hard physical work that surely will wear a body down and we’re too spoiled to do ourselves. Why should they not have more health care needs than those of us who have never even seen a strawberry field?
These immigrants contribute a lot more to our country than we want to recognize - whatever they do use is a smaller % of their contributions. In the end they still leave us a profit.
Regarding terrorism in the borders - the word is ‘coyote’ and human trafficking. Other than that, I understand that in the past most terrorists from abroad have entered this country legally.
The best thing we could do is start treating people from other countries the way we want to be treated - we don’t need to have military bases, military schools in 226 countries or our corporations controlling the structure, politics or economics of other countries and taking whatever ways the middle class and poor there have to survive away from them.
As much as we’d like to think that our interventions in those 226 countries are democratic and generous we are not there to know that and we wont know unless we have close ties to the communities affected. PR is what we do hear and our superior attitudes towards others is what the world knows. How can some talk about immigrant invasion or how immigrants use our recources when our government seems to have a military expansion plan around the globe and our corporations are using the majority of other ocuntries’ resources? Unfortuantely most of us have a very narrow view of what really is being done in the name of US citizens abroad.
Post a Comment