In the private U.S. healthcare system, immigrants are subsidizing the cost of insurance for their native-born counterparts, a recent study published in the journal Health Affairs found.
The research published in early October discovered that immigrants covered by private health insurance companies contributed $25 billion more in premiums than was paid out on their behalf in 2014.
The researchers reported that immigrants provide a net benefit in the private health insurance world and suggest that “curtailed immigration could reduce the numbers of ‘actually desirable’ people with private insurance,” according to the study.
The study attributes the net benefit to the fact that many immigrants in the U.S. are a younger, healthier demographic.
The new findings reinforce a 2016 study that showed illegal immigrant populations have contributed approximately “$35.1 billion more to Medicare from 2000 to 2011 than they used in services.”
Annenberg Media spoke with Nadereh Pourat, director of the Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research agreed with the study’s findings.
“Most of the research – what I have conducted and what others have conducted – [shows that] undocumented people never have high rates of health care utilization,” Pourat said. “All of those arguments about them being a burden on the system don’t seem to pan out.”
The current administration has targeted immigrants groups, and has rolled back on the Obama-era DREAM Act, cancelled Temporary Protected Status and promised to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration has also enacted a ban meant to prevent Muslims from entering the U.S.
These policy changes could affect who enters the country illegally. And that could affect the positive net benefit to the private healthcare sphere immigrants provide.
Pourat explained how the narrative of an overburdened healthcare system and the assumptions of immigrant use of services are false. She said that if future policies decrease the number of immigrants in the U.S., the result could negatively affect the economy in a variety of ways.
“[My own research] data indicates that about a third of undocumented immigrants have private coverage. So, you have a significant population that is paying premiums,” Pourat said.
Pourat said that by cutting back on the private healthcare population, there could be a potentially negative cascade effect on the economy.
Pourat explained that even if there is potentially a less burdened healthcare system, a net loss in profits might have unintended consequences on the size of the private healthcare sector. If the private sector loses money, she said, it might have to lay-off some of its workers.
“It stands to reason that if you have fewer people with coverage … [there might be] a net loss in that growth in that sector,” Pourat said.