Medical Expenditures on and by Immigrant Populations in the United States: A Systematic Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Flavin ◽  
Leah Zallman ◽  
Danny McCormick ◽  
J. Wesley Boyd

In health care policy debates, discussion centers around the often-misperceived costs of providing medical care to immigrants. This review seeks to compare health care expenditures of U.S. immigrants to those of U.S.-born individuals and evaluate the role which immigrants play in the rising cost of health care. We systematically examined all post-2000, peer-reviewed studies in PubMed related to health care expenditures by immigrants written in English in the United States. The reviewers extracted data independently using a standardized approach. Immigrants’ overall expenditures were one-half to two-thirds those of U.S.-born individuals, across all assessed age groups, regardless of immigration status. Per capita expenditures from private and public insurance sources were lower for immigrants, particularly expenditures for undocumented immigrants. Immigrant individuals made larger out-of-pocket health care payments compared to U.S.-born individuals. Overall, immigrants almost certainly paid more toward medical expenses than they withdrew, providing a low-risk pool that subsidized the public and private health insurance markets. We conclude that insurance and medical care should be made more available to immigrants rather than less so.

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-18
Author(s):  
Denver Lewellen

Since the 1980s, reductions in public expenditures stemming from neoliberal economic pressures have resulted in health care restructuring within the western hemisphere for single-payer systems as well as within the tiered health care system in the United States. These initiatives commenced alongside the fallout of economic crises in core capitalist countries beginning in the 1970s (see MacGregor 2001; Navarro 1996). In Canada and the United States, resulting reductions in health care expenditures have led to the downsizing of inpatient services and shifts towards outpatient community care.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 276-284
Author(s):  
William J. Jefferson

The United States Supreme Court declared in 1976 that deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain…proscribed by the Eighth Amendment. It matters not whether the indifference is manifested by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner’s needs or by prison guards intentionally denying or delaying access to medical care or intentionally interfering with treatment once prescribed—adequate prisoner medical care is required by the United States Constitution. My incarceration for four years at the Oakdale Satellite Prison Camp, a chronic health care level camp, gives me the perspective to challenge the generally promoted claim of the Bureau of Federal Prisons that it provides decent medical care by competent and caring medical practitioners to chronically unhealthy elderly prisoners. The same observation, to a slightly lesser extent, could be made with respect to deficiencies in the delivery of health care to prisoners of all ages, as it is all significantly deficient in access, competencies, courtesies and treatments extended by prison health care providers at every level of care, without regard to age. However, the frailer the prisoner, the more dangerous these health care deficiencies are to his health and, therefore, I believe, warrant separate attention. This paper uses first-hand experiences of elderly prisoners to dismantle the tale that prisoner healthcare meets constitutional standards.


1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-119
Author(s):  
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost ◽  
Sandra J. Tanenbaum

Health care expenditures in the United States have continued to grow despite efforts to control them. This Article discusses the need for health care reform, outlines the model that reform should follow, and considers why the United States has not progressed toward a workable solution. It introduces a single-payer approach to cost containment and explains how such an approach could be “sold” in the United States. Finally, the Article examines various ways to mobilize support for such health care reform.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 1051-1051
Author(s):  
STUDENT

The proportion of children in the United States without private or public health insurance increased from roughly 13 percent to 18 percent between 1977 and 1987, according to a new study by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR). The growth in the proportion of uninsured children in poor and low-income families over the decade was even more dramatic—it rose from 21 percent to 31 percent.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marcozzi ◽  
Brendan Carr ◽  
Aisha Liferidge ◽  
Nicole Baehr ◽  
Brian Browne

Traditional approaches to assessing the health of populations focus on the use of primary care and the delivery of care through patient-centered homes, managed care resources, and accountable care organizations. The use of emergency departments (EDs) has largely not been given consideration in these models. Our study aimed to determine the contribution of EDs to the health care received by Americans between 1996 and 2010 and to compare it with the contribution of outpatient and inpatient services using National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Discharge Survey databases. We found that EDs contributed an average of 47.7% of the hospital-associated medical care delivered in the United States, and this percentage increased steadily over the 14-year study period. EDs are a major source of medical care in the United States, especially for vulnerable populations, and this contribution increased throughout the study period. Including emergency care within health reform and population health efforts would prove valuable to supporting the health of the nation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raghid El-Yafouri ◽  
Leslie Klieb ◽  
Valérie Sabatier

Abstract Background: Wide adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) systems in the United States can lead to better quality medical care at a lower cost. Despite the laws and financial subsidies by the U.S. government for service providers and suppliers, the adoption has been slow. Understanding the EMR adoption drivers for physicians and the role of policymaking can translate into increased adoption rate and enhanced information sharing between medical care providers. Methods: Physicians across the United States were surveyed to gather primary data on their psychological, social, and technical perceptions toward EMR systems. This quantitative study builds on the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Technology Acceptance Model, and the Diffusion of Innovation theory to propose, test, and validate an innovation adoption model for the health care industry. 382 responses were collected and data were analyzed via linear regression to uncover the effects of 12 variables on the intention to adopt EMR systems.Results: Regression model testing uncovers that government policymaking or mandates and other social factors have little or negligible effect on physicians’ intention to adopt an innovation. Rather, physicians are directly driven by their attitudes and ability to control, and indirectly motivated by their knowledge of the innovation, the financial ability to acquire the system, the holistic benefits to their industry, and the relative advancement of the system compared to others.Conclusions: A unidirectional mandate from the government is not sufficient for physicians to adopt an innovation. Government, health care associations, and EMR system vendors can benefit from our findings by working toward increasing the physicians’ knowledge of the proposed innovation, socializing how medical care providers and the overall industry can benefit from EMR system adoption, and solving for the financial burden of system implementation and sustainment.


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