Well, people who aren't citizens still use the healthcare system, regardless if they have insurance or not. All those undocumented kids aren't just not getting sick -- they'll end up using the ER as primary care, clogging up the system, just like everyone else that doesn't have insurance.

> Given there are something like 20 million people in the US illegally

You should probably check your sources on that one. That number is highly suspect and came from someone who was trying to sell you on upping budgets for ICE.

> seems counter productive to count people who aren't citizens in a article primarily about US health statistics.

Non-citizens are still people.

You’ll probably get downvoted here for mentioning this. But I am with you.

I think we need to get out of this bad mix of insurance and health care being a crisis. But for that to happen, state benefits need to be locked down iron-clad to only us citizens. Not to your general tax payer base but only to US citizens and that includes ACA subsidies. States subsidies should be included in “government assistance” that makes beneficiaries ineligible for citizenship and permanent residency.

That is a problem that shouldn’t need a big discussion to solve in Congress. But given the current political scenarios it won’t.