Great news from The News & Observer today. They report,
based on an study in the current Journal of the American Medical
Association, that “Immigrants are no strain on Medicaid” — so the
headline says. That’s because, they say, “Between 2001 and 2004, the
state spent less than 1 percent of its total annual Medicaid budget on
care for such immigrants….” We’re talking just North Carolina’s
expenditures, by the way.

Here are the numbers from the JAMA article: 48,391 received
emergency Medicaid care; of those, 99.2 percent were undocumented. 93
percent were Hispanic.

So, comprende? There is “no strain on Medicaid!”

I
might as well add this personal observation while I’m on the subject.
Yesterday I went to get some inoculations at the Wake County Health
Department for a foreign trip I’m going to take in a few months. The
place has at least a half-dozen clinics, and the one I was in had at
least 90 percent Latinos there for services. Other clinics I saw also
had large percentages of Hispanics. Needless to say, Medicaid
represents only a small portion of taxpayer-subsidized health care.