How the border wall will pay for itself in savings on indigent healthcare

David Catron:

The most objective piece of writing on illegal immigration to emerge from the legacy media last week appeared under the title, “If We Want to End the Border Crisis, It’s Time to Give Trump His Wall.” It was penned by Andrew Sullivan, of all people, yet he admitted something few progressives have really accepted: “He won the election. He is owed this.” Sullivan’s regular readers will reflexively disagree, but his reasoning is irrefutable. So, most will have to revert to the “prohibitive cost” canard. In reality, the wall will easily pay for itself in savings to our health care system.

The cost of the border wall has been projected by numerous entities, and the estimates vary wildly. The Trump administration and the GOP congressional leadership have estimated its cost at $12 billion to $15 billion. Senate Democrats claim that the price tag would be $67 billion. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has projected the cost at $21.6 billion. Going with the Trump administration figure, the savings to our health care system should pay for the thing in a decade. Using the DHS figure, it will take far less time than a typical mortgage. Specifically, about 20 years.

This depends on what we pay for the health care we provide to illegal immigrants and how many will be stopped by the wall. Neither of these figures is easy to calculate, but it’s clear that most estimates we see in the media understate both. To hit the payoff goals noted above we would need to stop 500,000 people per year from illegally entering the country and eliminate an equal number from the Medicaid and Obamacare rolls. That would save $1.3 billion annually in medical costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, we spend nearly twice that on illegal aliens for emergency Medicaid alone....
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When you consider the cost of other social services to illegal aliens it payoff would actually be much quicker.