POLICY, POLITICS AND GLOBAL HEALTH 3
Tavenner, the Chief Operating Officer at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
receives the policy brief.
Over 40 million illegal immigrants are unable to access affordable healthcare. Due to
social economic factors, insurance companies do not provide coverage for the growing cases
of undocumented immigrants. Healthcare covers have increasing per capita rates as they are
not effectively distributed, leading to poor quality of medical services. With poverty levels of
over 23.3% for immigrants who are not citizens, there requires policy evaluations to address
the disparities in healthcare provisions (Martin & Ruark, 2010). The policies should address
the needs of the immigrants who reside within the country.
Intervention strategies for facilitating quality healthcare to immigrants are costly and
identifying the number of undocumented immigrants distributed in the country is a challenge.
Another challenge lies in the fact that healthcare systems are influenced by economic and
political elements affecting strategies designed for the elderly population and the poor.
Healthcare in turn falls victim to market forces and inflation of costs is evident due to
competition among medical cover providers (National Immigration Law Center, 2010).
Amendments to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
provide a credible option for encouraging undocumented immigrants to present themselves.
Better documentation on demographic information offers reliable input in addressing the
healthcare challenges.
Amendments to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act introduced in 1996 provide credible options for addressing healthcare challenges for
documented and undocumented cases of immigrants. Since documented cases have five year
waiting period to access Medicaid, a federal mandate requiring equal eligibility for
immigrants and citizens in healthcare packages offers a realistic intervention to limit effects
of overpriced medical services. Though the challenge of discrimination is addressed, the