Florida Dashboard Tallies Unpaid Hospital Costs of Illegal Aliens


Florida has launched a dashboard that reports the total cost of uncompensated health care for illegal immigrants, which currently tops $566 million.  

Announced on Wednesday, the interactive Hospital Patient Immigration Status Dashboard highlights “the cost of illegal immigration, which puts a strain on our health care system and taxpayers here in Florida,” the secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, Jason Weida, explained in a news release, emphasizing, “Our hospitals and health care systems are designed to provide quality services to the citizens of the United States.”

The dashboard offers county-level information about total expenses incurred by illegal aliens’ hospital visits in Florida. Southeastern Florida’s Miami-Dade County appears to have the highest amount of such expenses, estimated at a whopping $231.8 million.  

Screenshot of Hospital Patient Immigration Status Dashboard from website. (Photo: Peter Parisi/Daily Signal)

The dashboard also calculated that a total of 54,443 emergency medical visits and hospital admissions were made by illegal immigrant patients.

  The newly launched dashboard is designed to allow the public to click on each county and view its expenses incurred from illegal aliens’ hospital visits.  

The counties on the dashboard are illustrated with shades of blue to red, with the latter indicating the highest percentage of illegal immigrants’ hospital usage.  

According to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s news release, the total cost of care provided to illegal immigrants in Florida has exceeded $566 million, based off admissions data from June 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2023.  

“Policy should not be made in the dark. Whether they are for open borders or law enforcement, American voters need to know the real costs,” said Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) 

Hankinson added, “States and cities should report data on illegal immigrant education, health care, and other costs borne by taxpayers. State, local, and tribal police should check and report the immigration status of all encounters—which can be done through the automated checking of fingerprints, without any kind of profiling.”  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—seen here Feb. 19 in Daytona Beach, Fla.—launched a Hospital Patient Immigration Status Dashboard on Wednesday to inform Floridians how much illegal immigration is costing taxpayers in terms of health care. (Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

Applauding Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to launch the public information dashboard, Hankinson noted, “From criminal justice to illegal immigration, when our leaders hide the data, it means they know their policies aren’t working and are ashamed of the results.”   

Weida, the Florida health care agency chief, explained, “Gov. DeSantis continues to put Floridians first with his commitment to fiscal responsibility and prioritization of the needs and care of citizens first.”  

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