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Study Shows Immigrants Spend Less on Health Care in U.S.

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 July 2005, 15:01 CDT

Jul. 26--Immigrants in the United States spend less than half what native-born residents spend per capita on health care, according to a new study from Harvard and Columbia universities published Monday in the American Journal of Public Health.

Using government data from the U.S. Department of Health's Agency for Healthcare Research, the authors of the study said what they learned "refutes the assumption that immigrants represent a disproportionate financial burden on the U.S. health care system."

"The view that immigrants are taking away from others is sheer demagoguery," said one of the study authors, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Politicians have seized the issue and hold the view that immigrants are clogging emergency rooms. That's simply not true."

Described as the first national study on the health care expenditures of immigrants, the study involved a complex analysis of 1998 government data, comparing what immigrants and the native-born spent on emergency room visits, hospital visits and prescription drugs.

On average, an immigrant spent $1,139 annually on health care, compared with $2,546 for a U.S.-born resident. Latinos spent even less. U.S.-born Latinos spent $1,870, compared with $962 for foreign-born Latinos.

The study also found that immigrant children received dramatically less health care than U.S.-born children: 71 percent less in doctor's visits and 72 percent less prescription medications.

Although immigrant children visited emergency rooms half as much as U.S.-born children, their average per capita expenditures were greater.

The data on immigrant children suggests that when they visit emergency rooms, they are sicker, the study authors said.

The study fuels a longstanding national debate about immigration and its economic costs.

Advocates of limits to immigration and a crackdown on undocumented immigrants criticized the report, saying that it used old data and fails to take into account the true cost of immigrant health care -- particularly to the undocumented -- at the country's public hospitals.

"You can't determine whether immigrants are a burden to the health care system simply by this kind of analysis," said Steven A. Camarota, a research analyst at the Washington think tank Center for Immigration Studies. "That doesn't tell you very much. You have to find out what they pay in taxes."

Diana Hull, president of the Californians for Population Stabilization, a group that calls for a moratorium on immigration, challenged the study because it did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

Uninsured illegal immigrants turn to public hospitals for health care, and local and federal governments now shoulder the cost of providing this care, Hull said.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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