Florida officials blame illegal immigrants for draining more than $500 million of taxpayer money in health care costs, but the state's own reports don't exactly support that claim.
The state's fiscal estimates do not take into account the number of undocumented immigrants who actually pay for their own medical care or who are not required to report their legal status to hospitals, making it difficult to quantify actual costs. cannot be converted into
The report gives a figure of $566 million, but also says the actual figure could be between $0 billion and $2.6 billion.
In a report, the Florida Department of Health Services, which is run by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said it found “no clear correlation between the level of uncompensated care and the level of illegal aliens presenting to hospitals.” The authors of this report did find an association between uncompensated care and rural areas.
Still, even if a definitive decision is not reached, it would prevent AHCA and elected officials from using that information to criticize President Joe Biden and his response to the influx of migrants at the southern border. I can't.
“Illegal immigration has a clear and direct impact on health care costs in the United States,” a spokesperson for the Agency for Health Care Administration said in an email. “As a result of the Biden administration's policy failures, illegal border crossings are currently on the rise across the country and continue to place significant strain on hospitals and health care systems, negatively impacting both the cost and quality of services to the American people. It’s affecting me.”
At Thursday's bill-signing event, DeSantis defended the dashboard and said, “I'm proud of what we're doing to protect taxpayers and ensure we have a legal population in our state. This is really, really important.” ” he said.
What does the state's Immigrant Care Dashboard do?
AHCA's Hospital Patient Immigration Status Dashboard details the number of undocumented immigrants receiving hospital care by county.
The calculation the state used to arrive at the $566 million figure was to take the percentage of unpaid care above 3% and multiply it by Florida's 2022 hospital costs of $69 billion. .
The resulting $2.6 billion is based on the percentage of people who said they were not legally present in the country between June 1 and December 31, 2023, or 0.82 of all hospitalizations and emergency department visits. applied to %.
“I think it's worded very strangely… it's misleading,” said Thomas Kennedy, a spokesman for the Florida Immigration Coalition.
In a press release about the new dashboard, AHCA said that from June 1 to December 31, 2023, people in Miami-Dade County will have lost approximately 40% of these uncompensated costs, or more than $231 million. I emphasized that it was a burden.
But among the county's four safety-net hospitals, the Jackson Health System, the percentage of patients who refused to answer citizenship questions in the emergency department ranged from 26% to 68%. The data shows that.
Safety-net hospitals provide care to low-income, uninsured, and vulnerable populations and account for more than half of trauma center admissions in Florida. Safety-net hospitals in Florida include Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, Broward Health, Orlando Health, and Tampa General Hospital.
Justin Sr., CEO of the Florida Safety Net Hospital Alliance and former director of AHCA, told USA TODAY Network (Florida) that he was the agency's Medicaid director in the early 2010s. At the time, he said, the most “frequent users” of the emergency room were: An illegal immigrant undergoing dialysis. Dialysis therapy removes waste products and excess water from the blood when the kidneys are no longer functioning properly.
AHCA said it does not have data detailing the most common reasons illegal immigrants visit emergency departments, but it does explain why the dashboard is needed.
“The purpose of our dashboard is to understand the impact of illegal immigration on our nation's health care system and how it continues to strain health care resources and ultimately drive up health care costs for Americans. to clarify,” the spokesperson said. Email.
The AHCA report says illegal immigration contributes to a “strain on the health care system,” but at the same time, “all counties with negative returns also have below-average proportions of illegal immigrants.” It was also revealed that
Take Immokalee, an agricultural region in Collier County that is home to one of the largest immigrant communities in the country. The percentage of people who did not answer the citizenship question was low, but among those who did, very few said they were in the country illegally.
Impact of Florida's strict new immigration laws
Florida hospitals are required to ask patients about their immigration status as of last year, when Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature passed one of the county's strictest immigration laws (SB 1718).
However, the patient does not have to answer.
The law also imposes stiffer criminal penalties on traffickers, adds restrictions on undocumented immigrants, and creates new employment requirements with steep fines for those caught employing illegal workers.
Erika Nyborg-Birch, a clinical professor at Florida State University and director of the Farm Workers and Immigrant Rights Clinic (FIRC), says some of her clients living in the United States in exile have to check a box if they go to the hospital. He said that there is a high possibility that it will be included. This includes people who don't have formal status because they don't have a visa or green card or aren't U.S. citizens.
Asylum status is a form of protection for refugees, people who cannot return to their home country for fear of being harmed. For example, many people seeking asylum in immigration courts have work permits and pay taxes tied to their asylum claims, she explained.
“We have reached out to local hospitals, but we do not yet know how they will explain this form when patients come into the emergency room,” she added.
DeSantis, who frequently uses press conferences as opportunities to attack the federal government's response to the surge of migrants at the southern border, said illegal immigrants going to hospitals “impose tremendous costs on our communities.” Stated.
“People deserve an honest explanation of how much it's costing them in terms of services, and health care probably comes first,” DeSantis said when he signed the bill last May.
Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) said the legislation and the dashboard are aimed at providing transparency to taxpayers, especially about the costs associated with treating undocumented immigrants. He said the numbers were lower than expected because the bill was “working.”
Ingoglia said the law “removes the magnet that was drawing illegal immigrants to the state.” “We've heard anecdotally that illegal immigrants are leaving the state, and I think this data supports that.”
Kennedy of the Florida Immigration Coalition disagrees.
“I think it's just people telling the state government that what their immigration status is is none of their business when they seek medical care,” Kennedy said.
more:Florida hospitals and advocates comply with new immigration law with 'vigilance'
Anna Goni LessanContact USA TODAY Network's Florida state watchdog reporter at agonilessan@gannett.com.