How immigrants help health reform succeed

Medicare turns 50 today, which has provided an opportunity for all manner of retrospectives and speculation about what the future holds. The Partnership for a New American Economy is publicizing one of my favorite arguments: that immigrants are a key reason that Medicare is still solvent.

Their 2014 study (Staying Covered: How Immigrants Have Prolonged the Solvency of One of Medicare’s Key Trust Funds and Subsidized Care for U.S. Seniors) concludes:

• Immigrants are subsidizing Medicare’s core trust fund
• Immigrants played a critical role subsidizing Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund during the recent recession
• Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would be nearing insolvency if not for the contributions of immigrants in recent years

Bottom line: immigrants contributed $182 billion more to the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund between 1996 and 2011 than they received in benefits. Meanwhile, US-born citizens sucked out $69 billion more than they paid in.

But the argument for open integration goes far beyond the Medicare story. As I wrote back in 2011 (We need a liberal immigration policy to support health care reform)

1. Immigrants innovate and create economic growth. This growth is how the country gets wealthier and better able to support health care expenses without raising tax rates
2. Immigrants can use their intellectual capital and training –whether acquired abroad or here– to fill healthcare jobs such as primary care physician, pharmacist, nurse that would otherwise go unfilled

We have very stupidly made the US less welcoming to immigrants at the same time that talented people have more opportunities in their birth countries and while other countries have made it easier for educated immigrants to thrive. I partly blame the current state of affairs on the post-9/11 mentality. We’ll pay for it in the long run in healthcare and in the economy at large.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.