Special Pleaders Demand Coverage of Illegal Aliens, While Mexico’s Health Care System Is a Wreck
Center for Immigration Studies
Physician, Heal Thyself: Special Pleaders Demand Coverage of Illegal Aliens, While Mexico’s Health Care System Is a Wreck By George W. Grayson
CIS Memorandum, November 2009
Excerpt:
The demand that illegal immigrants be eligible for taxpayer-funded benefits under the health care reform measures now before Congress offers an opportunity to examine the deep flaws in Mexico’s own health care system. American taxpayers already provide more than $1,100 in health care every year for each of the nearly eight million Mexican immigrants (legal and illegal) in the United States who are uninsured or on Medicaid. This is more than twice the per capita health expenditure of Mexico’s own health sector, which is corrupt, unwieldy, and grossly underfunded. Mexico’s neglect of its own people’s health care increases the demands of its expatriates on America’s emergency rooms, clinics, hospitals, doctors, and other providers.