Immigrants underutilizing health care
A key reason immigrants use health care less is that they tend to lack health insurance, Dr. Sarita Mohanty said in "Unequal Access: Immigrants and U.S. Health Care," an article in the July issue of Immigration Policy in Focus.
The publication is produced by the Immigration Policy Center, which is dedicated to research and analysis about the contributions made to America by immigrants.
Foreign-born adults are nearly three times as likely to be uninsured than native-born adults and account for 55 percent less in per capita health-care expenditures, the study found.
"If looking at it from a national perspective, it doesn't appear that immigrants are overburdening health-care costs," Mohanty said.
The study found immigrants received $1,139 per capita in health care in 1998, compared to $2,546 for native-born residents.
Policies restricting immigrant access to health care would only increase immigrants' tendency to delay care until conditions become critical. In cases such as testing for diseases or treatment of conditions such as diabetes, that could have an adverse impact on public health, Mohanty said.
"We tried to paint the best picture we possibly could," she said. "This really explains that we don't have a lot of data."
Part of the difficulty in tracking data locally is that hospitals don't ask patients their immigration status. However, hospitals are paying more unreimbursed care in general.
Last fiscal year, the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics provided $40 million in uncompensated care, said Gordon Crabtree, interim chief executive officer and chief financial officer.
And that cost is rising. "We're averaging about a 15 percent increase over the past two to three years," he said.
In Utah, undocumented immigrants accounted for $21.25 million in emergency Medicaid care in fiscal year 2005, or about 1 percent of the $1.46 billion total. Much of that care was for mothers delivering babies, said state Medicaid director Michael Hales.
Judy Hilman, executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project, said the California study reaffirms prior research showing that immigrants, particularly the undocumented, are not using a disproportionate amount of health care.
"There is a myth out there (the undocumented) are getting into Medicaid, they vote, they are coming into this country for services," she said. In fact, "they underutilize health care," she said.
Hilman says said it would be wise for Utah to include immigrants in discussions about possible ways to alleviate uninsured rates, particularly among children, who are inexpensive to cover.
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