Oral

Although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will provide much-needed health insurance for as many as 32 million Americans, an estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants were excluded from health care reform. In this session proposal, five leading researchers in California, a state strongly affected by immigration trends, describe new research examining the impact of the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from ACA. Specifically, the researchers look at how this exclusion may result in higher costs of care and worse health outcomes for undocumented immigrants; how the exclusion may affect health status, healthcare access and costs of care for all Americans; examine misperceptions about whether the undocumented drive the current increase in the number of uninsured; investigate whether legal status is a stable health insurance predictor over time among U.S. foreign-born residents as well as the possible consequences of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on immigrant assimilation; discuss accurate methodologies for generating credible estimates of the number and characteristics of legal and unauthorized migrant Medicaid beneficiaries for ACA planning purposes. Four of the five presentations rely on data from the California Health Interview Survey, the nation's largest state health survey and the most comprehensive source of health information on California's large and diverse population. It is conducted on a continuous basis by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in collaboration with the California Department of Public Health and the California Department of Health Care Services.

Session Objectives: Describe differences in health status, health behaviors, and healthcare utilization by citizenship and documentation status among immigrants in California. Discuss the impact of the Great Recession on the uninsured population in California, in terms of citizenship status. Describe how the ACA citizenship provisions exclude undocumented immigrants. Discuss the potential effect of the ACA eligibility criteria among the immigrant resident population by analyzing whether legal status is currently a stable health insurance predictor over time. Identify whether self-reported information available in sample survey data may be used to generate credible estimates of the number of Medicaid beneficiaries as well as health and socioeconomic characteristics by migrant legal status Describe findings from the current research literature on health status, health care access and costs of healthcare for undocumented immigrants in the United States. Identify significant gaps in the research literature on undocumented immigrant health

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)