User:DiazFern8/Healthcare availability for undocumented immigrants in the United States

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Having deep roots in immigration, a considerable portion of the United States' populous is foreign-born. Undocumented immigrants make up about 28% of the foreign-born residents. A model analyzing data from 1990-2016 estimates the amount of undocumented immigrants in the US range from 16.7 million to 22.1 million. Significant barriers to health care face undocumented immigrants, including low socioeconomic status, difficulty negotiating time off of work, lack of transportation and language barriers. Having medical insurance coverage—whether private or through Medicaid—significantly influences the actual utilization of healthcare services.

Only a handful of municipalities in the United States offer health care coverage for undocumented immigrants, including Los Angeles County's My Health LA program, and San Francisco's Healthy San Francisco. Due to this the United States ranks using the

The lack of coverage of undocumented immigrants has shown increases in spread of preventable diseases. The lack of funding of prenatal care in undocumented women has also been calculated in being more expensive in the long run. 

- In bold means that I added to the lead using sources from other editors. In this case to create a more portrayal of the article to come.

Barriers to access[ edit]

Undocumented immigrants face a number of economic, social and political barriers in accessing healthcare services. In a literature review about health care for undocumented immigrants, it documents 3 major areas that act as barriers for healthcare: Policy, health system, and individual related issues. We can see in the following table how they divided these sections, as well as what percent of articles in the literature review discussed these issues.

Language barriers and ethnicity[ edit]

Socially, undocumented immigrants also confront language barriers daily and other cultural barriers in accessing healthcare. In the 2003 analysis from the California Health Interview Survey they found of all Mexican and Latino immigrants, undocumented immigrants had the highest rates of noting difficulty understanding their physician during their last visit. During these visits these undocumented immigrants also felt they would receive better care were they of a different race or ethnicity. Every race, including European-Americans say that. As a result of the language barrier, there were notable disparities in the health of children of ethnic minorities. Some notable differences were, but are not limited to: increases in mortality rates, decreased quality of care, use of services, organ transplants, and decreased chronic disease care.

International perspective[ edit]
Other foreign countries are also wrestling with questions related to the access of undocumented immigrants to national healthcare services and insurance programs. In particular, physicians who are often the point of contact in providing care have become increasingly vocal in these discussions. In Europe, pediatricians have been advocating for the extension of the UN convention to immigrants, refugees, and "paperless" children. Swedish pediatricians have openly opposed statewide policies excluding asylum-seeking children from gaining access to medical care and worked to create an alternative state-funded health program for these children in particular. Since 2000, Sweden has allowed asylum-seeking children the same access to medical care as Swedish citizens.

The Videla Law of 1981 barred immigrants lacking documentation from receiving health care in Argentina. In 2004, new legislation reversed this policy and stated that all immigrants should have the same access to health as Argentinian nationals. This includes free emergency care for all undocumented immigrants and free non-emergency care for those who are pregnant women or children. In practice, barriers to healthcare remain for undocumented immigrants. Individual provinces and providers have interpreted the law differently, and many require that patients provide official identification.

Single-payer healthcare has recently entered the debate in the United States, most notably as part of the platform of 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Sanders' plan was estimated to allocate $77 billion to health services for undocumented immigrants. Israel's universal single-payer healthcare system allows full access to health services for undocumented immigrants, but a 2014 report notes that there remain heavy discrepancies in healthcare utilization across socioeconomic strata.

''A 2012 study was conducted on the 27 members of the European Union about the extent of rights that undocumented immigrants have to healthcare in those countries. The range of healthcare rights differed widely from country to country, but could be broken down into three major groups. In ten countries, they offered less than minimal care, including emergency care (Finland,Ireland,Sweden, Austria,Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta and Romania). In twelve countries, undocumented immigrants received minimal care, including emergency care.(Germany, Hungary, Cyprus, Estonia, Denmark, Lithuania, UK, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Belgium and Greece.) In five countries, undocumented immigrants had more than minimal rights, including primary and secondary care. (Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and France.) The study also found that most member states did not meet the human rights standards in terms of health care.''