“Please tell us how much money is spent in Georgia on medical services for illegal immigrants?”
— Ron Weaver
Mike Luckovich
Mike Luckovich
If you want to figure out how to get world-class health care for free, becoming an undocumented immigrant in Georgia won’t help.
A few weeks ago, we asked AJC readers to share questions on their mind as they prepare to cast their votes in November. They delivered: With the elections for the president and legislative offices rolling closer, questions on both health care and immigration were top of mind. This one reader’s question hit on both subjects.
It can’t be denied the nation has soaring health care costs. It also has a burgeoning problem with the border. It’s not unreasonable to ask whether the nation’s health care costs are being driven by illegal immigration. The short answer is no.
In general, undocumented immigrants in Georgia are not eligible to enroll in the government’s big health care insurance programs for the poor and elderly, called Medicare and Medicaid.
Medicaid is the way state and federal taxpayers pay health insurance for poor children and some poor adults, including some disabled adults and some low-income elderly in nursing homes. Overall about 2 million Georgians are enrolled in Medicaid.
Medicare is the taxpayers’ main program to insure elderly adults.
Generally, neither of those programs allow immigrants who are in Georgia illegally to enroll. But there is an exception.
Hospitals are forced by federal mandate to stabilize any emergency patient who comes in the door, regardless of insurance status. When someone’s not insured and doesn’t have money to pay, that leaves the hospital in the lurch.
That law doesn’t make exceptions if the patient is an undocumented immigrant — perhaps injured in a car crash or in labor about to give birth. The emergency room will treat them.
In return for that emergency service, Medicaid will take on that patient’s bill and pay the hospital if they otherwise would have met the eligibility criteria such as age and income.
We asked the state Department of Community Health how much that emergency Medicaid spending for undocumented immigrants added up to; they didn’t have an answer available.
Of course nothing prevents charities, friends and family from also shelling out to pay undocumented immigrants’ doctor visits and prescriptions. Research has shown that even for legal immigrants, their health care costs tend to be less than half that of citizens, partly because they seek care less often.
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