Federal and state spending for medical services for illegal aliens has topped $16 billion under “border czar” Kamala Harris, an increase of 124 percent compared to the same period under the Trump administration.
That, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis at the request of House Budget Committee Congressional Budget Office Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX).
In response to the analysis, Arrington issued a statement addressing its findings.
“The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis confirms that the mass migration of illegal immigrants is costing billions of dollars to Medicaid – a program created to serve the health care needs of the most vulnerable Americans,” stated Arrington. “This is on top of the executive action taken to provide $9 billion in Obamacare to illegal immigrants.”
Arrington pointed out how not only is the care draining federal resources but also disincentivizing people from pursuing legal avenues for migration.
“With over $16.2 billion flowing from federal and state governments’ coffers to pay for emergency services for illegal aliens, it is clear that Open Border Czar Vice President Harris’s failed border policies remain the greatest threat to both the United States’ national security and our economic standing.”
Tip of the Iceberg
As shocking as the numbers provided in the analysis are, Matt Dean, senior fellow for health care policy outreach at The Heartland Institute, which co-publishes Health Care News, argues that the cost to taxpaying citizens may be much higher.
“The projected spend of $16 billion by the House Budget Committee is very likely only a fraction of the actual cost of care to pay for the health care of illegal aliens crowding hospitals and clinics,” said Dean. “We all pay for this shift in the cost of care which disproportionately and unfairly falls on the backs of middle-class Americans who pay higher rates for private health insurance, and who obtain less care for their families as it is rationed to stretch scarce out of pocket dollars.”
Unreliable Estimates
Gauging the actual number of illegal aliens siphoning benefits meant for taxpayers is tricky due to everchanging rules for reporting and estimating the total population of undocumented border-crossers and overstays.
Dean says estimates for the number of illegal aliens in the US and receiving health care varies absurdly, with highly implausible numbers being reported by the Biden DHS.
“The real problem is that we have no good numbers to show how many illegal aliens are in the U.S., how they are receiving healthcare, or how that care is being paid for,” said Dean. “The DHS (Department of Homeland Security) contends that there were around 11 million illegal aliens in 2022, with little change over the past ten years.
Senator Marco Rubio claims that the number could be as high as 30 million. The fact that encounters at the southern border by DHS skyrocketed from 2.37 million during the years 2017-2021 to 8.72 million since, would indicate that a static population of inadmissible aliens during those years is unbelievable. So, if we don’t know if the number is 11 million or 30 million, it makes no sense to budget their cost of care.
It is hard to determine exactly how much care is being received by unauthorized aliens in our care system because we don’t have good numbers on how much care is delivered, how much is uncompensated, and which patients are in the US legally.”
Insuring the Uninsured
Beyond direct payouts for medical care for illegals by Medicaid and other taxpayer services, there are countless other financial burdens imposed on citizen taxpayers created by lax oversight of health care expenditures for illegal aliens and by soaring medical costs. The overburdened health care system could leave U.S. consumers with higher copays and premiums.
Additionally, vetting Medicaid eligibility for poorly documented aliens may be poor to nonexistent, the opposite of what happens to well-documented citizens. This is intentional policy says Linda Gorman, director of the Health Care Policy Center at the Independence Institute
“Federal policy is all about reducing the number of uninsured,” said Gorman. “It doesn’t matter whether the uninsured get medical care or the insured don’t get medical care or whether the uninsured person is here illegally and goes home for medical care, all policies supporting the expansion of government control of health care are defended by saying it reduces the number of uninsured.
Admitting illegals increases the number of uninsured which bolsters the case for bigger and bigger roles for government in medical care, increasing the tax burden on American citizens. The endpoint is California, which has recently decided to cover all residents who qualify for Medicaid on an income basis regardless of citizenship. The fig leaf is that California is supposed to use state funds to pay for those people.”
Slipshod Auditing
People who are ineligible for Medicaid are often enrolled. “Eligibility checks on Medicaid enrollment have not been taken seriously for a long, long, time,” Gorman said.
“Early evidence comes from the imposition of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 rules which required that everyone applying or renewing Medicaid coverage provide citizenship documentation,” said Gorman. “In 2006, when people were required to provide real ID for enrollment, Medicaid enrollment fell for the first time in 40 years.”
Gorman says Harvard physician and health economist Benjamin Sommers estimated that 390,000 adult non-citizens in Medicaid (1 in 4) and 81,999 child non-citizens (1 in 8) were screened out by the requirement.
“Because coverage is all that matters, the left immediately began beating the drum about people losing coverage and activists began whining about the loss of coverage and set about weakening the ID requirements,” said Gorman. “By and large, they have been successful.”
Trump won the election in 2016 on the strength of his border control policies and won again in 2024 on a message of reform.
Kevin Stone (kevin.s.stone@gmail.com) writes from Arlington, Texas