A new report from the Community Service Society of New York states that offering health insurance to the roughly 457,000 currently uninsured illegal aliens living in New York would cost the state as much as $462 million per year.
The report, which vouches for offering medical insurance to hundreds of thousands of people living in the United States illegally, explains three possible ways to expand New York’s current health care coverage to some or most segments of the illegal alien population (or “newest State residents,” as the report calls them).
But even the pro-insurance for illegal aliens advocates can’t hide from the exorbitant load that expanding health care would place on American taxpayers, many of whom are already shouldering the burden of paying for Obamacare subsidies.
From the report:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) has helped millions of New Yorkers to secure affordable, quality health coverage, many for the first time. However, many unauthorized immigrant New Yorkers are left without coverage; ineligible for Medicaid, the new Essential Plan, or Qualified Health Plans in the New York State of Health Marketplace. Lack of coverage is burdensome for immigrants and our greater society alike.
For immigrant families, lack of coverage can mean excess mortality and morbidity, as well as financial ruin. Everyone else contributes to the hidden health costs for the uninsured through government-financed payment mechanisms such as uncompensated care funding and public and private payer cost shifting.In New York, despite the State’s expansive public insurance programs, as many as 457,000 unauthorized, uninsured immigrants remain ineligible for coverage.
But the buck doesn’t stop there. The report continues:
These State coverage options would extend health insurance to between 90,100 and 241,600 immigrant New Yorkers, at a cost ranging from $78 million to $462 million annually.
The report then attempts to justify the increased hit on taxpayers’ wallets by explaining, “Even the most ambitious of these proposals would result in a less than 1 percent increase in our State’s health budget of roughly $60 billion.” The group added that one estimate puts New York-based illegal aliens’ state and local tax contributions at around $1 billion annually.
Unfortunately for this proposal, much of the money used to build and sustain state-run insurance marketplaces comes from federal coffers (about $5 billion was used just to build them, CNBC reported last July).
On top of the sheer amount it would take to insure the nearly half-million illegal aliens through the state’s plan, a new report Friday shows the New York health insurance marketplace is already struggling to remain on its feet due to mounting losses sustained by participating insurance providers. Twelve providers selling plans on the state’s marketplace sustained $160 million in losses last year alone, an article from WGRZ stated.
But yes, let’s expand the government’s failing insurance program to people who shouldn’t actually be in the country.
Or, perhaps if that $462 million was redirected to securing the border, we could begin to solve at least one of these issues once and for all.