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Comment by OrvalWintermute | Hacker News Reader

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"Illegals" can't use full Medicaid, they can only receive emergency care which hospitals are required to give by law. That's what that $4.5B figure is – emergency care, labor, delivery, etc. Furthermore, undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes each year, including the payroll taxes that fund Medicaid and Medicare. Taxpayers aren't on the hook, because these immigrants are already paying in for services they can't even use.

Medicaid & Medicare Fraud is a big deal.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/09/how-medicare-and-medicaid-fr...

You know most of that is committed domestically, yes? Here's a famous example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Fraud_investigation...

The CEO of the company that committed this record-setting fraud became governor of Florida and is now a US Senator.

So they can use (expensive) emergency care but also they are paying for (cheap) services they can’t even use? That’s some interesting logic. Clearly they can and do use some of these services.

I'd wager that long-term care such as chemotherapy is much more expensive than one-off emergency services like broken legs or going into labor.

> That’s some interesting logic.

Say what you mean.

> Clearly they can and do use some of these services.

I never said they don't – in fact I said the opposite of that.

Personally, I'm ok paying 30 bucks a year to make sure fellow human beings in the US don't die of preventable causes in our streets.

Our country is massively in debt, and healthcare fraud is off the charts currently.

We don't need more people exploiting the system.

Legal immigrants pay into the system, and do their fair share.

The illegals broadly do not support federal expenses.

> Personally, I'm ok paying 30 bucks a year to make sure fellow human beings in the US don't die of preventable causes in our streets

EMTALA forces hospitals to treat emergent conditions regardless of ability to pay/status.

But what you are talking about as "preventable causes" sounds more like chronic conditions and universalized healthcare that does not meet the definition of emergent situations.

"The illegals" pay much more into the system than they take. This "fraud" is entirely imaginary.

If we deport them they won't die of preventable causes in our streets.

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