Study Finds Illegal Immigrants Are Less Likely to Use Health Care Services
While anti-immigrant groups claim that undocumented immigrants are a burden because they overuse public healthcare resources, a recent study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine found that illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries in California are 50% less likely than the US-born from these groups to use hospital emergency rooms.
The study compared
data from 42,044 participants of the 2003 California Health Interview
Survey, such as access to health care,
use of services, and health care experiences for Mexicans and other
Latinos, and citizenship and immigrant authorization status.
By federal law, hospitals must treat every emergency,
regardless of a person's immigration status.
However, the study found that while illegal immigrants are less likely to
be insured, they made fewer visits to physicians and were 30% less likely than
U.S.-born Latinos to have a regular source of healthcare. Access
to and use of health care services tended to improve with changing
legal status.
According
to the study, illegal immigrants are infrequent patients for primary care
visits, because being asked for ID cards, Social Security numbers and employment
histories makes them nervous.
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