Immigrants & Health Care

Why Excluding People from the Health Care Exchange Is Impractical and Harmful to All of Us. It’s not about the policy, but the politics. We need more people paying into the Exchange, to make reform work for everyone. Screening out immigrants will harm citizens. Health care reform cannot fix the immigration system. America’s families include immigrants; excluding them will harm everyone. (PDF, 9/14/09)
	■	New Senate Health Care Reform Proposal Fails to Meet the Needs of Americans: Senate Committee Buckles, Allows Immigration Attacks to Derail Common Sense (9/16/09)

Health Care Reform Toolkit. Advocates need to mobilize to forcefully counter anti-immigrant and anti-health care reform forces who are spreading untruths about immigrants and affordable health care. (8/10/09)
	■	The Real Threat to a Healthy America: Opponents of Health Reform Add Sickening Barriers to Affordable Health Care (article in Asian Pacific Americans for Progress blog, coauthored by Sonal Ambegaokar, NILC health policy attorney; 8/6/09)

Improving Immigrant Access to Affordable Health Coverage: Analysis of the Massachusetts Health Care System as a Model. Although Massachusetts serves as a promising model for how federal health care reform can address the needs of immigrants, improvements to the model are also needed. (PDF, 5/27/09)

TALKING POINTS: Health Reform Proposals Should Ensure that All Workers Have a Level Playing Field and Can Contribute Toward Affordable Coverage for Themselves and Their Families (PDF, 5/27/09)

Health Care Expenditures for Immigrants Are Lower Than for Citizens. Immigrants use less health care, on average; they are far less likely to be offered employer-sponsored health coverage; despite their high workforce participation rate, they are more likely to be uninsured; they are less likely to use emergency rooms. (PDF, 5/27/09)

Principles of Immigrant Integration in Health Care Reform (compiled by the Coalition for Immigrant Equity in Health Care: APIAHF, CIPC, KRC, MALDEF, NAKASEC, NILC, NCLR, NYIC, & SEARAC). "[These] principles should be hallmarks of any policies, campaigns, or messages promoting health care reform in the U.S. and reflect American values of fairness, opportunity, and community." (11/26/08)

ACTION ALERTS
Wed., Jan. 13, 2010	Congress Must Not Leave Out Immigrants in Final Health Care Bill
Tue., Nov. 10, 2009	Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962): The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly for Immigrants
Wed., Oct. 21, 2009	TELL CONGRESS TO TREAT IMMIGRANTS FAIRLY Health Reform Must Open Medicaid to Legal Immigrants
Tue., Aug. 25, 2009	NO MORE WAITING FOR AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE!! End all waiting periods for affordable health care options for legal immigrants in health care reform now!
Fri., July 24, 2009	ENOUGH is ENOUGH Strong Response Needed to Prevent Congress from Shutting Legal Immigrants out of Health Care Reform
Tue., July 7, 2009	Tell Congress This Week to Include in Health Care Reform the Health Equity and Accountability Act of 2009 (H.R. 3090)
Mon., June 29, 2009	CALLS NEEDED: Tell Congress That Immigrants and Kids Deserve Fairness in Health Reform
Mon., June 15, 2009	CALLS NEEDED: Immigrants Need Equal Access to Health Care under Senate HELP Legislation!

NON-NILC INFORMATION

Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What's Really at Stake? (By Randy Capps, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Michael Fix; Migration Policy Institute, Oct. 2009).
"[P]rovides a roadmap of the key health reform issues, focusing . . . on two populations likely to remain at the center of policy debates: [LPRs] with less than five years of legal residency, and unauthorized immigrants. [A]ddresses legal immigrants' eligibility for Medicaid and health insurance subsidies and their inclusion in individual mandates, and strategies for screening out unauthorized immigrants." (Link posted 10/14/09)

From the Immigration Policy Center
	Including Legal Immigrants in Health Care Reform: Just What the Doctor Ordered (Aug. 19, 2009). HEADINGS: Who are legal immigrants? \| Why excluding legal immigrants doesn't make sense. \| The more people who pay into a health insurance system, the more everyone benefits. \| As the U.S. population ages, the more people paying into the system, the more increased costs will be spread out. (Link posted 8/24/09)
	Sharing the Costs, Sharing the Benefits: Inclusion is the Best Medicine (Fact sheet, 7/22/09; link posted 8/24/09)
	Including Immigrants in Health Care Reform Makes Economic Sense (Blog post, 7/15/09; link posted 8/24/09)

The "Healthy Migrant" Effect (By Katherine Fennelly, PhD, excerpted from Healthy Generations, Vol. 5, Issue 3, Feb. 2005, published by the Center for Leadership Education in Maternal & Child Public Health, University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Dr. Fennelly is co-editor of Healthy Generations.) (Link posted 12/22/08)

Five Basic Facts About Immigrants and Their Health Care (Kaiser Family Foundation, 3/08). (Link posted 12/22/08)

Immigrants in the U.S. Health Care System: Five Myths That Misinform the American Public (By Meredith King Ledford, published by: Center for American Progress, 6/7/07). (Link posted 12/22/08)

The Role of Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage for Immigrants: A Primer (Kaiser Family Foundation, 7/06). (Link posted 12/22/08)

Resources on Immigrants and Health Care Coverage (Link to a page containing links to resources compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation's Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.) (Link posted 3/19/08)

Issue Briefs and Other Resources

Immigrants and Health Care: At the Intersection of Two Broken Systems. "For recent immigrants [to the U.S.] -- especially the estimated 12 million who are here illegally -- seeking health care often involves daunting encounters with a fragmented, bewildering, and hostile system." (Perspective/analysis by Susan Okie, M.D., in The New England Journal of Medicine, 8/9/07.)

Language Access in Health Care Statement of Principles (2007). "[A] diverse group of interested stakeholders developed these principles. The intent is to provide a broad framework to inform efforts to improve health care delivered to limited English proficient individuals." (Posted 11/26/08)

Language Access in Health Care Statement of Principles: Explanatory Guide (First published: 10/06; Reissued: 11/07) (link is to NHeLP's website)

Immigrants and the U.S. Health Care System (PDF) (Prepared by CIPC, the California Immigrant Policy Center, 9/06). Immigration restrictionists in the U.S. often accuse immigrants of using health care services for which they are not eligible or of using them more than everyone else. Generally, however, such accusations are unsubstantiated and based on uninformed assumptions. This issue brief provides research-based information about immigrants' use of health care in the U.S.

Facts About Immigrants' Low Use of Health Services and Public Benefits (9/29/06)

Language Barriers to Health Care in the United States (Perspective/analysis by Glenn Flores, M.D., in The New England Journal of Medicine, 7/20/06)

Unequal Access: Immigrants and U.S. Health Care (7/06) (A report by Sarita A. Mohanty, M.D., M.P.H., for the Immigration Policy Center's Immigration Policy in Focus, July 2006). From the IPC's summary of the report: "Some policymakers have called for [even more stringent] limits on immigrants' access to health insurance, particularly Medicaid . . . . However, policies that restrict immigrants' access to some health care services lead to the inefficient and costly use of other services (such as emergency room care) and negatively impact public health. The future economic success of the United States depends on a healthy workforce. Therefore, policies must be devised that improve, rather than restrict, immigrants' access to quality health care."

Language Barriers Pose a Risk for California HMO Enrollees (5/06) (A research brief published by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research)

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Issues Final Guidance on Reimbursing Health Care Providers for Emergency Services to Uninsured Immigrants (5/23/05) (PDF)

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, "Proposed Implementation Approach: Federal Funding of Emergency Health Services Furnished to Undocumented Aliens: Federal Fiscal Years 2005 through 2008" (7/21/04)(PDF)