Effects of undocumented immigrants exclusion from health care coverage in Spain

In 2012 the Spanish government passed Royal Decree-Law 16/2012 (RDL) aimed at containing public expenditure in response to the economic crisis. This RDL redefined just who would be entitled to public health care. As a result, a large proportion of undocumented immigrants in Spain were excluded from basic publicly financed health care with access only being granted under particular circumstances (emergency care, maternal care, children under 18, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking).

The aims of this paper are to identify the specific traits of this policy, review its impact on health and health care access, and to evaluate its economic impact.

Most political parties and health professional groups opposed the RDL, and a large number of Spanish regions either declined to apply it or opted to apply it partially. To date, the RDL has had a considerable impact on the access of undocumented immigrants to public health care, with evidence suggesting that approximately 870,000 people have been excluded. A slight increase in infectious diseases has been reported, albeit not as high as originally predicted, and recent evidence points to an increase in mortality among this population subgroup.

Regional legislation favouring the coverage of undocumented immigrants might have acted as a counterweight and thus contained the negative health effects in this population subgroup. But the Constitutional Court invalidated all regional arrangements obliging regions to comply with the RDL.