If you wonder why American health care is so expensive, perhaps you should take a good long look at how much of it is being given to non-Americans — even in red states.
According to new data from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and first released by Texas Scorecard, illegal aliens imposed a $1,050,642,864 burden on the state’s hospitals in fiscal year 2025, with 313,742 visits being recorded by those “not legally present.”
Because yes, even in Texas, we have to use euphemisms for “illegal alien.” But I digress.
As TheBlaze noted, the data were collected and released all because of the efforts of Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed an executive order in August of 2024 mandating that state hospitals begin recording how much of the burden of medical care could be chalked up to illegal aliens.
And, yes, in less than a full fiscal year — numbers only began being recorded in November of 2024 — there was over $1 billion in care involving illegal aliens.
About $230 million of this was for emergency department visits.
Inpatient care, meanwhile, was over $820 million. In other words, long-term hospitalizations were what was costing Texas the most, with over $565 million from non-Medicaid and non- Children’s Health Insurance Program patients.
And even with two months unreported, Texas Scorecard noted in its Wednesday report, “the reported costs far exceed earlier estimates.
“In 2021, Attorney General Ken Paxton estimated Texans were paying between $579 million and $717 million annually in uncompensated care for illegal aliens. The partial FY 2025 totals alone already surpass that range,” the outlet reported.
But then, why should we even be surprised?
Under Joe Biden’s administration, over 10 million illegal aliens entered the United States, and Texas was by far the most active area for these illegal crossings. Not all these illegal immigrants ended up settling in Texas, but enough of them did that numerous reports of overwhelmed public services were commonplace during the worst periods of the border crisis.
And this is before Texas bused hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants out of its state and to places where they wanted to go — making cities like Chicago, Denver, and New York hopping mad about the whole thing.
Operation Lone Star, which was meant to enforce immigration law at the state level when the federal government wouldn’t, had apprehended 516,300 illegal immigrants as of July 2024, and while it bused many of those who stayed out of state, there were still plenty who remained in Texas.
If you don’t believe me, the numbers don’t lie: Ken Paxton, not known as a man who understates things when it comes to the costs of illegal immigration, pegged the upper limit of uncompensated care at $717 million just a few years ago.
This was actually short by a margin of almost $300 million now.
Joe Biden’s manufactured border crisis will continue to have ripple effects in the years and decades to come. To the extent a social safety net is desirable, we’ll be less inclined to offer it, because we know it’ll be abused by people who shouldn’t be here but were cynically allowed in because demographics is destiny to some people.
And to the extent that we’re forced to pay for the safety net because medical care must be provided and illegal aliens are less likely to pay for obvious reasons, those of us who do pay for our medical care will end up paying more, all because the left found our border a hassle to protect. Nice going, guys.
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