US immigrant health spending mostly birth related
Source: Reuters
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - U.S. researchers tracking government health care spending on illegal immigrants found that most of the money goes to childbirth costs and pregnancy complications, a study conducted in North Carolina showed. It was published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association in an issue devoted to access to medical care in the United States. This comes amid growing concern over rising U.S. health care costs and the number of people lacking health insurance, as well as controversy over illegal immigration. States experiencing an influx of illegal immigrants like North Carolina are facing rising Medicaid costs. But the study found that these emergency Medicaid costs accounted for less than 1 percent of North Carolina's Medicaid budget. "This challenges a fairly common public perception that somehow immigrants are placing a very large burden on the Medicaid budget. It is not that we are spending so much through Medicaid on health care for immigrants. It's that we are spending it at the wrong end of care," Dr. Annette DuBard of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told reporters. Illegal immigration is a heated political issue in the United States, as it is in many countries, with one element of the debate focused on the cost these immigrants bring to taxpayer-funded medical care. Researchers led by DuBard said their study was intended to shed light on the nature of the medical care paid for by the government for these immigrants. They also said the money may be more wisely spent on preventive care. The study examined emergency spending in North Carolina from 2001 to 2004 under Medicaid for recent immigrants, about 99 percent of whom were listed as illegally in the country. Medicaid is the federal-state health care program for the poor. More than 48,000 people got care costing more than $185 million under Medicaid during these years, 93 percent of whom were Hispanic and 95 percent of whom were women. The study found that 83 percent of this emergency Medicaid spending and 91 percent of the hospitalizations were related to childbirth and pregnancy-related complications. EMERGENCIES With many of these immigrants not getting routine medical care, the remaining costs covered emergency conditions like appendicitis and injuries and serious complications of chronic illnesses like kidney and heart disease. Illegal immigrants, as well as legal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years, generally are not eligible for Medicaid. But they can get Medicaid coverage for health emergencies if they are in a category of people otherwise eligible, such as children, pregnant women, families with dependent children, elderly or disabled individuals, and meet other requirements. DuBard said increased access to preventive care, prenatal care, contraceptives and chronic disease management programs may represent better use of public money by improving the health of these immigrants and lessening the demand for costly emergency care. Other studies appearing in the journal found poorer medical outcomes for heart attack patients who could not afford certain medical services and for uninsured people experiencing a new health setback. A study by Dr. Harlan Krumholz of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, tracked 2,498 people for a year after a heart attack and found that about one in five -- most of whom had insurance -- said they could not afford certain health services or medicines. These people were more likely to end up back in the hospital than patients without such financial constraints, the study found.
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