Immigration and Population by Bohon Stephanie A.; Conley Meghan E.; & Meghan Conley

Author:Bohon, Stephanie A.; Conley, Meghan E.; & Meghan Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2015-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

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Immigrant Health

When people in the developed world are asked to express their view on the impact of immigration, many voice concerns about how much of their taxes is being spent on immigrants enrolled in medical assistance programs (see Mohanty et al. 2005). Some people fear that their country’s health care system is overburdened by immigrants who consume large quantities of the nation’s limited health resources. In the United States, some worry that immigrants enter the country primarily for the purpose of obtaining health care. Many Americans express concern that unauthorized immigrants, in particular, receive all of their health services at the expense of US taxpayers (Berk et al. 2000). Across the developed world, many worry that immigrants – many of whom come from developing countries – may spread infectious diseases and bring with them new chronic diseases and behavioral problems (Gushulak 2007). All of these fears are unfounded, but given the importance of health care and the costs of maintaining it, it is easy to see how the impact of immigrants on the health care system would be a vital concern.

People living in developed countries live considerably longer and have better general health than people in developing countries. Much of that longevity is attributable to higher-quality medical care and better access to such care. However, good medical care comes at a cost. Developed countries spend, on average, about $2,000 per person annually on health care. In the United States, health care spending is considerably higher, at nearly $8,000 per person and more than 17 percent of gross domestic product (OECD 2011). Health care costs in the United States are also rising faster than national income, and employer-paid premiums for workers’ health insurance policies increased 97 percent between 2002 and 2008 (Goodell and Ginsburg 2008). Given the high and rising cost of health care, it is understandable that many US-born residents worry about the impact of immigration on the escalation of these costs.

To the extent that the public funds the health care system, the health of immigrants directly affects the cost to taxpayers (Dunn and Dyck 2000). In nearly all developed countries, health care is administered through a national health care system, and all residents have access to catastrophic care at the very minimum (Fuchs 2013). In the United States, which does not have a national health care system, health care is privatized, and most people are individually responsible for their own health care costs; however, health care is provided by the government to the very poorest through programs such as Medicaid and to the elderly through Medicare. Most authorized immigrants who have been in the United States for five years or less are prohibited from applying for Medicaid, and access is severely restricted for all unauthorized immigrants; however, these facts are not widely known.

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