Written by R. Cort Kirkwood Saturday, 29 June 2019
When NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked the 10
candidates in Thursday's second Democratic presidential debate to say
whether illegal aliens will be covered under their “free” healthcare plans,
hands shot into the air with such speed the leftist worthies looked like a
bunch of grade-school kids who knew which president said, “I cannot tell a
lie.”
“Free” healthcare for
illegals might have been one of the few times the candidates weren’t lying, but
at any rate the moderators let the out-of-the-blue policy proposal go by
without asking the obvious question: How much will providing healthcare to all
those illegals cost?
Happily, Breitbart.com reminded everyone
what it costs now — nearly $20 billion annually. However, some quick
calculations show that the cost would be much more than that if all illegal
aliens join Medicare for All — about $50 billion.
Forbes Estimate
Writing for Forbes’ Apothecary
feature in February 2018, Chris Conover put the cost of healthcare for illegal
aliens at $18.5 billion, with $11.2 billion of that total coming from the federal government. Conover used the Pew Research
Center’s illegal-alien population estimate of 11.3 million, an estimate that dropped to
10.5 million in 2019.
Wrote Conover,
“Current federal policy is to prohibit federal tax funding of health care to
unauthorized immigrants through either Medicaid or Obamacare. Nevertheless,
rough estimates suggest that the nation’s 3.9 million uninsured immigrants who
are unauthorized likely” cost federal taxpayers a bundle: $4.6 billion in
direct subsidies and another $5.7 billion through the employer tax exclusion for
employers and employees, who don’t pay taxes on health premiums. Illegals cost
state and local taxpayers $2.8 billion, and they receive $4.5 billion in
charity care from doctors and hospitals, the latter including “bad debts
arguably cost-shifted to private patients.”
Conover estimated that
about 7.7 million illegals have some form of health coverage, If these 7.7
million illegals were given access to Medicare for All, which is what the
Democratic presidential candidates are proposing, then this huge influx would
obviously balloon the cost way beyond the current $18.5 billion figure.
Let's do some
back-of-the-envelope calculations. Conover estimated that 3.9 million of 11.3
million illegals aliens here cost about $18.5 billion in “free” healthcare. But
adjusting the 11.3-million figure downward to reflect Pew's updated
illegal-alien population estimate (10.5 million), and assuming the 3.9-million
and $18.5-billion figures would drop proportionately, then this 3.6 million
illegals would cost about $17 billion annually.
If all 10.5 million
illegal aliens land on the federal healthcare dole via the Democrats' Medicare
for All proposal, the number receiving “free” healthcare jumps 192 percent,
from 3.6 million to 10.5 million. Assuming costs increase by the same
percentage, we can expect the cost for illegal-alien healthcare to soar to
about $50 billion.
Granted, some illegals
might not join Medicare for All if the proposal left private-industry options
available. But given the party's radicalism, we have no reason to believe a
Democratic president and Congress wouldn't opt for socialist Bernie Sanders'
plan, which ends all private health insurance. As well, the notion that
healthcare will be "free" will provide everyone, not just illegals,
with an incentive to join Medicare for All.
The cost of providing
healthcare for illegals in 2018 was about $57 per U.S. resident, Conover
calculated. But what “concerns me the most — $11.2 billion borne by federal
taxpayers — amounts to $34 per U.S. resident.”
That figure has
changed, obviously, but Conover’s observation holds:
Admittedly, one could
argue that since the amounts at stake are so small, this is not an issue worth
fighting about. However, it is precisely that sort of thinking that has led us
to today's dismal reality that unfunded liabilities facing Uncle Sam now are
roughly $200 trillion and rising.
The socialists running
under the Democrat banner see future voters in all those illegals, whom they
hope to make citizens by offering free stuff.
Imagine how those
unfunded liabilities will grow if the number of illegal aliens on the public
dime increases by almost 200 percent.
FAIR Estimate
In 2017, the Federation for Immigration
Reform offered nearly an identical figure for illegal-alien
healthcare, and broke the expense into four categories:
• Uncompensated
Hospital Expenditure $8.2 billion
• Medicaid Births $1.2
billion
• Improper Medicaid
Payments $3.5 billion
• Medicaid for
U.S.-born Children of Illegal Aliens $4.2 billion
Total: $17.1 billion.
But again, as Forbes noted, those are illegals who don’t pay for
their medical care or don’t have employer-provided health insurance.
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