I bet Lou Dobbs doesn't cover this story tonight - Quick turn it on and see

[NNN0LHI]

Immigrants do not overwhelm US healthcare - study

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N259083.htm

WASHINGTON, July 25 (Reuters) - Immigrants are not swamping the U.S. health care system and use it far less than native-born Americans, according to a study released on Monday.

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that immigrants accounted for 10.4 percent of the U.S. population but only 7.9 percent of total health spending and 8 percent of government health spending.

Health spending by the government, insurers and patients themselves averaged $1,139 per immigrant compared to $2,564 for non-immigrants. Thirty percent of immigrants used no health care at all in the course of the year.

Immigrant children spent or cost $270 that year, compared to $1,059 for native-born children.

"Our study lays to rest the myth that expensive care for immigrants is responsible for our nation's high health costs. The truth is, immigrants get far less care than other Americans," Dr. Sarita Mohanty, who led the study while she was at Harvard University and who is now at the University of Southern California, said in a statement.

[queeg]

1. Believe it---It's the UNINSURED that are swamping it

[w8liftinglady]

2. Agreed-100%

My boyfriend is an ER nurse,and he says 90% of the people use the ER as a doctor's office,because they have no health insurance.Women show up with no prenatal care,in labor-you guessed it-no health insurance.Universal coverage would save us in the long run(and I'd like to add Universal Dental coverage to that).

[EVDebs]

3. He'll cover it under 'globalization' ... read this article

The Benefits Trap
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892001_mz001.htm

"Perhaps most important, in the global economy, long-established U.S. companies are competing against younger rivals here and abroad that pay little or nothing toward their workers' retirement, giving the older companies a huge incentive to dump their plans."

All those multinationals are dumping healthcare and pension plans. It's called socializing your costs and privatizing your profits, since the CEOs take the money and run, offshore.

They outsource the jobs, even bringing in visaholders (H1B, L1s) and pay those workers less while at the same time displacing US workers who are often forced to train their visaholding replacements.

BTW, who pays for the illegal immigrant's healthcare expenses ? Certainly not the company that did the hiring. That company should be paying the expenses plus the $10,000 fine for hiring the illegal worker in the first place !

[pinto]

4. Thanks for passing this on. great to see a professional, peer reviewed

article refute some of the more inflammatory, cherry picked statements that get floated.

The one statistic that gets the most focus, of course, is the disparity in ER use. Allowing, no encouraging and facilitating access to primary and preventative health care wold cut those numbers considerably, and save the system money - ER care is notoriously expensive, comparitavely.

[KharmaTrain]

5. What Does Doobs Stand For?

He says he's against "illegal immigration", but doesn't hestitate to show support for wingnut vigilantes and their mostly anti-Hispanic agendas.

He also claims the problem is with "business interests" that profit from using the cheap labor and dumping these workers on the states without ever really mentioning who they are or championing forcing these people into the open...as many are owned by the same drinkie-drinkie CEO buddies he really is on the air to represent.

What you need to do is now rephrase those results in a loaded poll question and send it to Lou. Then watch in the next couple days and see how he used it 180 from what you sent.

Cheers...

[KerryOn]

6. I think Lou Dobbs may actually agree with this ....

.... but I agree that he probably won't cover it.

I agree with the study/article, but there is one very important thing that they left out.

>"The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that immigrants accounted for 10.4 percent of the U.S. population but only 7.9 percent of total health spending and 8 percent of government health spending."<

Where does that 10.4 percent live and what portion of them are Hispanic? It has been reported that some hospitals in the southern boarder states like Arizona and Texas are on the verge of bankruptcy, because of all the immigrants seeking health care. Some of these hospitals have actually been shut down, leaving no hospital for miles around for the immigrants as well as people with health care coverage. This is a tremendous strain on those communities, and now thousands are with out a hospital yet alone health care coverage.

[Robert Oak]

7. What? ILLEGAL does not equal LEGAL

Firstly, from this article:

"The only case in which immigrants' costs for health care were higher than U.S.-born children was in emergency department visits ($45 vs. $18 per capita)," the researchers said in a statement.

Most immigrants had health insurance, the survey found. It said 58 percent of immigrants had private insurance, compared to 74.9 percent of native-born U.S. citizens, and 17.3 percent of immigrants had some sort of public insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid, compared to 15 percent of native

ok, these numbers say it is worse for "immigrants", which is opposite of the report claim and also is not the issue Lou Dobbs talks about, he talks about ILLEGAL aliens.

but you cannot report statistics on the truth of the situation lumping
legal residents with illegal ones! Just doesn't work and the other studies are exclusive to ILLEGAL immigration. They do not include legal immigration and of course not, because legal immigrants have valid social security numbers, rights in the nation, right to work legally and so on, so in essence, are the same as US citizens.

Man, I cannot believe a Harvard PHD is making such a fatal flaw lumping together illegal with legitimate immigrants. Let's see the numbers comparing apples to apples as this current is spurious if it truly lumps the two together.

[EVDebs]

8. The 'anchor babies' are paid for with health insurance ?

Boy, I'll bet Vicente Fox is as relieved to hear that whopper as are the taxpayers in all the border states.

[Robert Oak]

9. anchor babies is highly controversial

I'm not going to touch it, especially when over and over and over
people try to put legal immigration with ILLEGAL immigration.

Jesus Christ! How many times has Lou Dobbs clarified that on his show,
yet here we are and nobody even gets there is a huge difference!

[EVDebs]

10. Nobody's going to have insurance or benefits, that's my point

See post #3 above. Globalized corporations are going to strip all workers of health and pension benefits. It won't matter WHAT country your're from at that point.

[Robert Oak]

11. yes, Grover Norquist

has papers talking about everyone being a contractor and "bidding" for projects...

this is one massive attempt to remove workers rights and anything for the middle class.

Just a minor comment because you can see the original poster had no problems in mixing illegal and legal immigration and it's so frustrating, so tackling the topic of anchor babies just ain't on the top of my agenda! Getting liberals to realize this is labor arbitrage and thus a worker/middle class/liberal issue is already a bitch!

(can you count the number of times you have been accused of either being a Repuke or a racist when posting in anything with keyword immigration in it? :))

[EVDebs]

12. Robert Samuelson's columns recently show immigration needs a

'time out' ... it isn't sustainable. And the Sierra Club can't come out and say the US has a carrying capacity else they will be called hypocrites.

BTW, in the Knight Ridder article in my newspaper on this study it has Steffie Woolhandler, the harvard physician/researcher co-author revealing that

"Where they (immigrants) do cost more, however, is in the emergency room. The study found that ER expenditures for immigrant children were more than three times higher than for U.S.-born children" and that the data analyses was done on 1998 Medical Expenditures Panel Survey, a federal government collection of national data. This begs the question, since even the census data cannot give an accurate number -- only estimates-- on the number of illegal immigrants, as to the present day numbers. That database is seven years old.

Also, ER's are mainly paid for with taxpayer dollars.

Please read Newsweek columnist Samuelson's article:

The Hard Truth of Immigration: No society has a boundless capacity to accept newcomers, especially when many of them are poor or unskilled workers.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8100266/site/newsweek/

I realize that compassion for immigrants is a GOOD trait for DUers and I have nothing against them. My point is that Mexico should be doing more to provide work IN Mexico. Also, Greg Palast's article on Tom Friedman's hypocrisy re India is revealing. The Indian states where Bangalore and the other IT hotspots there are based are very socialistic ! Read French Fried Friedman at
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=434&frm=eml

DUers need to reexamine their kneejerk support for immigration, at least until the lower class workers being displaced by globalization have a chance to catch up here at home. Speaking of 'Home' 1 Timothy 5:8 shows that we are all, immigrants and native-born, trying to provide for our families. On a national level that would mean slowing down immigration ...