Immigrants and Medicaid

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that less than 1% of North Carolina’s spending on Emergency Medicaid goes to illegal immigrants. Most of that money was spent on pregnancy and childbirth complications. The overall conclusion is that greater attention to prenatal care would be even less expensive, and even fewer people would go to an emergency room at all.

But it also chips away at conventional wisdom. First, we find out that recent immigrants (many of whom are here illegally) are less likely to commit crimes. Now we find out they use Medicaid less than people assume.