The Senate Immigration Bill’s Impact on Health Care
<p>The comprehensive immigration bill recently passed by the U.S. Senate would create new pathways to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, but it would do little to improve those <a href="/blog/2013/senate-immigration-bills-impact-health-care">immigrants' access to health care,</a> according to Leighton Ku, Ph.D., director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services.</p><p>In a new blog post, Ku writes that, thanks to the Affordable Care Act's individual and employer insurance mandates, most new legal immigrants should have insurance coverage, and some will be eligible to receive subsidies. But unauthorized immigrants as a group and immigrants on the pathway to citizenship will likely continue to have high uninsured rates and limited access to care.</p>
<p>"If enacted, a comprehensive immigration reform bill could significantly enhance civil rights and economic opportunities and bolster the overall economy," Ku writes. "But it would probably not mitigate the large disparities in access to care that now exist for noncitizen immigrants, compared with the native-born."</p>