Impact Of Immigration On Health Care
The U.S immigration policy has many confusing tenets that equally complicate immigrant health care. Court decisions and Executive orders, most especially allow dynamic changes in policies at any time.
Nevertheless, 2018 statistics show over 44.7 million immigrants and over 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Most immigrants might be citizens, but a lot more are without documents. The U.S workforce equally shows over 7.6 million undocumented immigrants, of which about 3 million pay taxes using the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.
Limited Affordable Immigrant Health Care
Nevertheless, undocumented immigrants cannot enroll for Medicare, Obamacare, CHIP, or Medicaid. Undocumented immigrant health care provisions are mostly available through private means (for those who can afford it) or emergency services.
Illegal immigrant’s health care provisions are also provided at community health centers. However, these provisions are only made for preventive and primary health care needs. There are no provisions for specialties. Therefore, complications from any emergency may not be treated.
The True Impacts
Regardless of immigration status, health care inequality expands the cost of medical care for everyone, including U.S Citizens. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, people who cannot afford or access preventive care wind up using the hospital emergency room, and this brings about more expenses because emergency care needs are significantly more expensive than preventive care.
According to statistics, over $10 billion is spent on Medicaid sponsored emergency care, and most people who use these options are undocumented immigrants. These individuals preferably go without health care until health conditions become worse. Naturally, the alarming costs are passed into tax bills.
Therefore, illegal immigrant health care provisions are an issue that must be adequately addressed. Some experts state that universal health care options are an ideal way to level up the cost of health care. According to these experts, it could force doctors to provide the same standard of service to all individuals at a lower price. Also, providing improving coverage through community-based health clinics may significantly reduce the cost of health care. It can help avoid the alarming costs of emergency care and help deal with undocumented immigrant health care concerns.