Immigrants' use of healthcare system lower than expected

[SHRED]

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This is really gonna piss off the "blame the brown people" crowd.

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Study finds immigrants' use of healthcare system lower than expected
UCLA researchers find that Latinos in the U.S. illegally are 50% less likely to visit emergency rooms.
By Mary Engel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2007

Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The cost of providing healthcare and other government services to illegal immigrants looms large in the national debate over immigration.

In Los Angeles County, much of the focus of that debate has been on hospital emergency rooms. Ten have closed in the last five years, citing losses from treating the uninsured, and those that remain open are notorious for backlogs.

By federal law, hospitals must treat every emergency, regardless of a person's insurance -- or immigration -- status. Illegal immigrants, who often work at jobs that don't offer health insurance, are commonly seen as driving both the closures and the crowding.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-immigrants27nov27,1,1945804.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=2&cset=true

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/27/healthcare-immigrant/