Lone Star Times and BlogHouston have both had articles on immigration costs recently, specifically the cost to Harris County. Ninety-seven million dollars. Then there’s the cost to the private sector:
Chris Baker was discussing this yesterday and one of his callers identified herself as an employee of a private, fourteen-hospital group here in the Houston area. She said they routinely write off anywhere from 40 to 60 surgeries each week, because the patients are here illegally and are unable to pay. She said the paperwork will often have Social Security numbers such as 111-11-1111, or 999-99-9999, and bogus addresses, but since hospitals are prohibited from turning anyone away, there is nothing they can do about it.
Let’s see, 40-60 surgeries a week written off, plus all the diagnotics, post-op care, nurses, doctors, medicines, etc. And the city’s portion of employee insurance costs has skyrocketed over the last several years (I recall a graph, but I can’t find it online at the moment–think about 2-3x if not larger). Meanwhile, although the city has absorbed the bulk of the increase, my (still fairly reasonable) insurance costshave also increased. That’s because the cost of the medical services the insurance has to pay for have skyrocketed. Maybe torts and malpractice insurance are just the whipping boys for people who’d rather distract us from the real cause of high medical costs, eh?
Oh and don’t forget those city clinics. See item #13, or would you rather look at the Health Department’s budget? Look at page 6: $17,000,000 budgeted for health services in FY 2007. How much goes to illegals? Well, I am fairly certain that the city doesn’t track it.
Then there’s all the costs to HPD and so on; that’s literally incalculable. The truth is, we can only guess at the primary costs. The secondary costs for things that have to be done (or can’t be done due to the diversion of effort) ripple outwards from that.
Considering that we’re “enjoying” record revenue, yet still can’t hire enough police and have to borrow money to make ends meet, I don’t think the city can afford to coddle illegals, let alone spend $100,000 to help them find jobs on which they won’t be paying taxes. (Maybe we could send this lady to make sure the illegals get a fair wage? )
In any case, we need to get this cost off the backs of Harris County and City of Houston taxpayers before we’re back in this boat again.
‘We’ve seen this economy stop and go, stop and go for two and a half years. There are some signs that things are improving. But we need two or three months of data under our belts before we can say we are on the right track.’
–Barton Smith, Director of UH’s Institute for Regional Forecasting, in 2003
And then there was this gem, from the same source:
At the June 18 [2003] City Council meeting, Councilman Gordon Quan openly wished he had a crystal ball to see future sales tax revenue figures.
Well Gordon, my patented Backwards Ball of Seeing(tm) says that the sales tax revenue will be great and yet a mayor who runs the city like a business still can’t balance the budget. (Funny how Ms. White isn’t really making much of that. Just let me remind you that borrowing money to meet pension obligations means you’re in the red.)
Sorta makes you wonder what’s going to happen when revenue is actually capped, or the revenue slides, doesn’t it?
Update: 6/19: Yet another cost of illegal immigration, this time on the federal and state level. Via.
