Here's the next installment of the Rocky Mountain News' series on immigration. From the article, "Illegal immigrants' use of medical care is at the white-hot center of the immigration debate. The common refrain: Hospitals are groaning under the burden of patients who are undocumented. They flood emergency rooms and the state picks up the tab. That drives up Medicaid costs, the argument goes, which is bankrupting states, robbing other programs and pushing U.S. citizens to the bottom of the waiting list for services. The reality is that the costs of Medicaid and hospital charity are, indeed, spiraling upward, but illegal immigrants contribute only a small share of the uninsured, underinsured and working poor who are increasingly relying on government and charity help.
"It's difficult to pinpoint growth in the costs of caring for illegal immigrants, but one measure is emergency Medicaid - which has gone up 57 percent in the past six years. This federally mandated program pays for emergency room care for anyone who would qualify for Medicaid based on income but can't prove citizenship or five years of legal residency. Medicaid takes care of the very poor, children born into poverty and the disabled, with the state and federal government splitting expenses 50-50. Emergency Medicaid's cost in Colorado rose from $39.4 million in 2001-2002 to a projected $61.9 million this fiscal year. Nine of the top 10 treatments are for pregnant women. But emergency Medicaid makes up less than 2 percent of the Medicaid budget. Medicaid's caseload, meanwhile, has risen 60 percent in the same period. At the same time, hospitals' costs for charity care and unpaid debt have grown dramatically, and low- cost clinics that care for the uninsured are strained."
Read the whole article - it's chock full of stats and information.
"2008 pres"
5:54:12 AM 
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