Immigrants Dire Effects on Health Insurance Statistics

Brian Doherty | September 26, 2006

Something I can wholeheartedly and without shame blame immigrants for, according to this fascinating post from Reason contributor Megan McArdle: tedious complaining about declining or dangerously low percentages of Americans with health insurance:

Since 1987--the earliest year for which I could quickly lay my hands on census data--the number of uninsured Americans has skyrocketed from 12.9% to 15.9%. If we look only at native-born Americans, the numbers have been essentially unchanged since 1993 (again, the earliest census figures I could find). In 1993, 86.3% of native-born Americans had health insurance; in 2005 that figure was 86.6%. All of the increase in uninsured has come from immigrants . . . and I don't think they'd be better off getting their health care back in Guatamala.