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Written by Simon
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Friday, 21 September 2007 |
The California legislature reported that treating “Illegal Aliens”
without insurance in emergency rooms costs the state seven hundren
million dollars per year. And they imply that this is the reason for
the crisis in the states emergency rooms. How about a little
perspective here.
California has a 1.5 trillion dollar economy.
Healthcare in the US consumes about nine percent of our GDP. So
California is spending about 140 Billion dollars per year on
healthcare. 700 million represents about one half of one percent of
this number. “Illegal Aliens” without insurance are not the problem!
Stop scapegoating them.
Another way to look at it is there are 30 million people in California a cost of 700 million is about $24 per person per year. It would be nice if it was lower but paying $24 each to have maids, gardeners, cheap produce and really excellent service in restaurants is a bargain. One of the reasons we live so well in California is affordable services and affordable services are a result of a large and constantly renewing immigrant population.
At Radical Immigration we believe that the moral argument for allowing people to live where they choose is so strong that the economic arguments even if they were true would not win the day. But it is not true that the "health care crisis" is caused by "illegal aliens."
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