From an Investor's Business Daily editorial:

For those who think that illegal aliens are a good deal because they will work for such low wages, consider this figure - $9 billion.

That rather large sum is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's low-end estimate of how much is spent each year on health care for illegal immigrants, not by themselves but by others.

So while illegal alien labor might be cheap for businesses that employ undocumented workers, it isn't, as Rohrabacher points out, for taxpayers...

Rohrabacher's bill, should it become law, will have, at best, a modest impact on illegal immigration and the costs taxpayers bear for them. But if it stirs people to their senses and leads to an eventual - and rational - denial of health care and other government services to illegal immigrants, it would have a much larger effect.

Too bad the effect would be diminished, because the message of the president's de facto amnesty plan will still provide a strong incentive for more illegals to enter and wait until the next amnesty comes. As long as that's the case, the U.S. will continue to serve as HMO to Mexico, if not the world.