Distant Cousins: health care and immigration reform

Recently, Arizona embraced the spotlight on the subject of immigration proposing and passing a controversial law to fight illegal immigration; law now requires police stopping motorists for routine infractions to check their immigration status due to “reasonable suspicion” of unlawful entry. Many view this law as a victory in the fight over illegal immigration. The convoluted topic of immigration reforms introduces several issues. Proponents view immigrants as an obtrusive abuse of civil liberties; arguing that the introduction of new citizens increases disease, crime, taxes due to welfare or health burdens, and crowding. In this article, I intend on focusing on health burdens.

Immigrants represent an often uninsured and underinsured portion of the population and tax payers take on the expenditure of their medical care straining the financial stability of the health care industry. They use emergency services forsaking preventative medical care, burdening the hospitals with advanced and costly medical procedures. The estimated tab left by these illegal immigrants' medical care in many states ranges well above $1 million up to as much as $4 billion a year. Delivery of babies to illegal alien mothers represents a large and frequent cost to taxpayers. And until recently, in most states these babies automatically became U.S. citizens. Consequently, in addition to an illegal expenditure by the mother, illegal immigrants legally received health care benefits.

These staggering numbers burden doctors and impeded medical care to actual citizens. Consequently, a comprehensive health care reform should include a restructuring of health coverage. This of course introduces an ethical dilemma: how can any doctor refuse care to a legitimately sick person? In reality they should not be put in this position, and by remaining negligent on immigrant emigration the government places a burden on tax payers and hospitals.

The health care reform bill doesn’t seem to outline a cure to this problem. Arizona seems to be on the right track; identify illegal immigrants and remove the burden. This will put citizens in the front of the line toward receiving the care they need. Not only will the number of patients decrease, but practitioners will be available to distribute the funds more proportionately.