Thread by @CIS_org

EVENT 930AM: Healthcare for Illegal Immigrants: What would it cost?

Two new reports published.

cis.org/Press-Release/…

The first report details the participation rate and cost of Medicaid usage by immigrants under existing policy, which offers noncitizens less access to the program compared to citizens.

cis.org/Report/Cost-Im…

The second report estimates the cost of providing illegal immigrants full access to public health benefits.

cis.org/Report/Cost-of…

“Any serious debate on providing health care coverage to those in the country illegally requires a cost estimate."

m.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/…

42% of immigrant-headed families had at least one member who was enrolled in Medicaid during 2016, compared to 26% of native-headed families.

Immigrants are costlier not because they have any special appetite for welfare, but cuz they tend to have less education & larger families that they struggle to support.

If you want to reduce reliance on welfare, we need to change policies on how we select immigrants.

Camarota’s analysis estimates the cost of providing illegal immigrants access to the existing system of government health benefits for low-income people.

Illegal immigrants can't buy on Obamacare exchange or get Medicaid. But dem candidates want a change from this system.

There about 5 million uninsured illegal immigrants with incomes low enough to qualify for Medicaid or Advanced Premium Tax Credits (APTC) - subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Given their age & income, average cost of providing an ACA subsidy for an illegal immigrant would be about $4,600 each yr.

22.6 billion if all of these signed up. This is more than we pay for welfare (TANFF) annually.

Although we think illegal immirgants are cheaper to insure and we think less than half will sign up in the first yr, we estimate will cost 10.4 billion the first year.

Providing illegal immigrants with pulic health benefits depends heavily on what we chose. Allowing access to these programs will cost taxpayers between 10 - 23 billion dollars.

Free healthcare or subsidized healthcare will attract more illegal immigrants.

What's next guestworkers? This owuld be millions of people as well.