In Florida, medical costs for illegal immigrants were nearly cut in half after a law requiring hospitals to track unpaid care provided to them.
Senate Bill 1718, Signed The bill, proposed by Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), goes into effect in July 2023, and almost a year after it was enacted, the results have been startling. Although the bill does not require hospitals to deny illegal immigrants treatment that they know will never be paid for, in the year since immigrants were asked about their immigration status, these unpaid bills have dropped significantly.
WATCH — ABC’s Raddatz criticizes Mayorkas on border: Hard to call 6.5 million immigrants a success:
The new reporting system identified a 54 percent decline in Medicaid. Spending Since the law came into force last year, POLITICO.
While it has not been conclusively proven that this outcome is a direct result of the reporting requirement, state Republicans have hailed the law as a success.
Not surprisingly, advocates for illegal immigration are surprised and disappointed by the law, accusing Republicans of using the reporting requirements to drive illegal immigrants out of Florida.
“Clearly, there is an exodus of immigrants happening in Florida,” said Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigration Coalition. POLITICO“When all this was going on, we were warning about the worsening work[force] “I said this was a bad idea, given the shortages and the beleaguered industry.”
A handmade sailboat carrying Cuban migrants lands in the Florida Keys. (U.S. Border Patrol/Miami Sector)
Some Republicans who advocate for cheap labor see the law as problematic. Republican state Rep. Rick Ross, who voted for the bill, tried to act aggressively after the bill passed in 2023, immediately visiting Florida farms to urge migrants not to leave the state, but to stay in Florida and not abandon their agricultural jobs, NPR reported last June.
Ross’s issue is that the bill would require companies with 25 or more employees to run new hires through the E-Verify database to determine whether the applicants can legally work in the United States.
Regardless of whether the law will be enforced, as Breitbart News reported, it determines that Florida hospitals are owed more than $566 million in unpaid bills, a total that Governor DeSantis and supporters of the law say is evidence that illegal immigration is causing significant damage to both the state’s public and private sectors.
Since the law went into effect, the huge amounts of money that hospitals have spent treating illegal immigrants have been tallied and made public. To name just a few, Manatee Memorial Hospital reported spending $21.2 million on unpaid care of illegal immigrants, Broward County lost $43,056,022 in 2024, Duval County lost $31,439,143, Hillsborough County lost $58,822,134, Orange County lost $58,328,521, and Miami-Dade County lost a staggering $231,804,144.
Florida may finally be addressing its exorbitant health care spending, but the same thing is happening unacknowledged in every state in the U.S., a nurse at a hospital in Chicago, Illinois, told Right Side Broadcasting Network’s Vanessa Broussard in an interview last week. Trump rally He noted that a hospital in Racine, Wisconsin, is overwhelmed with patients who don’t speak English.
WATCH — Arizona migrant surge overwhelms Border Patrol RESOURCES:
Randy Clark / Breitbart Texas
He criticized Chicago’s leniency in providing free health care to illegal immigrants. To tell“Yes, you can go to the emergency department and get treated for free. I mean, I don’t think anyone is turned away, but it’s just a burden on the system.”
He added: “I’ve seen patients who don’t speak English, who don’t have proof of U.S. citizenship, and that’s a drag on our system. And we have a lot of diseases that were once eradicated from this country, like measles and tuberculosis, that are coming back. That’s not good. That’s really not good.”
“There are so many Americans here who need help. There are so many people on the streets who have mental illnesses, homeless veterans. It’s like they’re just being pushed out while we’re taking care of people who don’t belong here,” he exclaimed.
Healthcare isn’t the only area where services to the American people are being hit hard by the Biden administration’s wave of illegal immigration: education is another area where Americans are being cut off by the influx of illegal immigrants in order to help migrants cross the border.
a Story In The Washington PostFor example, one study focused on the school district of Rotterdam, New York, which saw an influx of 30,000 immigrants sending their children to local schools to receive a “free” education.
Miami Sector agents apprehended a large group of migrants who landed in Tavernier, Florida. (U.S. Border Patrol/Miami Sector)
But the city schools have not only poured money into services for non-English speaking students, they have expanded school services into areas they should not be involved in, such as social services, clothing distribution, housing assistance, medical care, and a variety of other activities that turn schools into welfare agencies.
“They are our students,” Principal Shannon Shine proudly told the newspaper, “and we take care of them.”
Teachers and school administrators Post They were excited to be transitioning into social service providers, but at the same time, all these resources were being directed directly at the children of illegal immigrants, which inevitably took them away from helping Americans in the same kind of need.
Florida is finally putting a price tag on Joe Biden’s entire response to illegal immigration. The cost is certainly high, and it remains to be seen whether all other states will follow Florida’s example.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Hustonor the Society of Truth Warner Todd Houston
