Providing healthcare coverage to illegal immigrants living in the U.S. could cost up to $23 billion per year, Fox News reports.
A study from the Center for Immigration Studies, a policy group that advocates against immigration and is designated an anti-immigrant extremist group by the Southern Policy Law Center, estimates if all uninsured illegal immigrants who are eligible for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were to receive them, it would cost about $22.6 billion per year, though the "likely enrollment" is less than half that, and would result in an estimated cost of $10.6 billion per year.
Federal and state governments currently spend well over $500 billion on Medicaid, with about $2 billion going to reimburse emergency rooms for treating the uninsured, according to CNN.
"It makes more moral and clinical sense, but also more financial sense, to take care of people before they are in crisis," Dave Chokshi, the chief population health officer at NYC Health & Hospitals, told CNN last month. "The care we provide right now is too often emergency care, rather than primary care."
"Numbers aside, the fact that presidential candidates are advocating spending billions of dollars on people who are in the country illegally is significant in its own right," the report concludes. "It suggests that allowing in large numbers of less-educated workers will inevitably generate significant political pressure to provide them access to social programs."
The group's research director, Steven Camarota, told The Washington Times, "Any serious debate on providing healthcare coverage to those in the country illegally requires a cost estimate," he said, adding, "tolerating illegal immigration creates a significant burden for taxpayers."
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