Insured immigrants spend less on health-US study

[AlphaCentauri]

Insured immigrants have lower medical expenses than U.S.-born citizens, even after accounting for lower levels of insurance coverage, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They said the findings contradict the popular belief that immigrants are a drain on the U.S. health system.

"Many people claim that immigrants are using large health care expenditures in the United States and they are causing emergency room bills to soar," said Leighton Ku, a health policy researcher at George Washington University, whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN14183693

[ejpoeta]

1. well why bother with things like facts and statistics when it sounds better to blame the

immigrants for all the troubles.

[enlightenment]

2. A more effective article would have included statistics

for uninsured immigrants, since presumably the giant drain from ER visits is because of the uninsured (regardless of their immigration status) not the insured.

The only thing that can be reasonably assumed from this study is that insured immigrants, for reasons that they don't cover, don't spend as much on health care as other insured people in the US.