Posted on 12/13/2004 8:56:18 PM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Hard-headed or soft-hearted. As Shakespeare would have said, that is the question — particularly when dealing with the question of Hispanic migration. A job that pays enough to support one’s self, to send money home. An education for the children. Health care. An opportunity for your child to be born in the United States and automatically have U.S. and, in some cases, citizenship in their home country as well. Such promises — made by politicians, both Democrat and Republican as well as some in foreign lands, by some less than scrupulous businessmen, by the coyotes (not four-legged ones but those who charge what to the migrant are huge sums of money to smuggle them across the U.S.-Mexico border) — sound good.
These promises are breaking the “health care bank,” nowhere more than in Tennessee and Bedford County. A young mother, her husband and 3-month-old boy occupy the single bedroom of a three-room house in Shelbyville. The mother went from Guatemala to Mexico, then walked across the border. Her child, born in the U.S., has spina bifida … the baby’s medical bill exceeds $250,000; her bill is more than $60,000. Advocates have been working to get both on TennCare. Take Bedford County Medical Center, for example. While only 4.1 percent of those utilizing the facility are of Hispanic origin, more than half who use the obstetrical services are Latinos. Most of those receive pre-natal care at the Bedford County Health Department with delivery by a local physician — and paid (at least in part) by a federal grant. Health Department statistics show that 41 percent of FY 2004 patient encounters (patient visits, not individuals) indicated their primary language as Spanish.
Persons in this country illegally supposedly are not eligible for TennCare, at least on a long-term basis. If they go to the hospital in a crisis, they may be placed on the rolls for the duration of the emergency, usually 30 days. The state covers labor and delivery charges and, as children born in this country are American citizens, they are eligible for the state’s medical program. Who pays the bill? Taxpayers.
Other excellent articles in the Dec. 13 issue of the paper. Check it out.
BTTT
If a person is in this country illegally and she births a child, is the child a citizen? Isn't this law only for people who entered the country legally?
If a person is in this country illegally and she births a child, is the child a citizen? Isn't this law only for people who entered the country legally?
California is well aware of the bankrupting effect of illegal immigration and the EMTALA law passed by congress forcing medical providers to give care.
We will have lost 80 hospitals in this state in the last 10 years due to bankruptcy and insufficient payments for government mandated health services, even though our population has gone from 20 to 31 million in the last 10 years.
EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT AND LABOR ACT (1985)
by Madeleine Cosman, PhD, Esq
President Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) into law in 1985 along with the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires doctors in hospital emergency rooms to treat every person who comes in through the door without requesting whether the patient is insured, how, or by whom until after the patient is either:
· stabilized for transfer
· stabilized for discharge
Even if the emergency facility is overcrowded, understaffed, medically or surgically unprepared, or otherwise inadequate, the physician is forbidden to transfer to another medical facility any patient who for whatever reason is not accepted for full treatment and admission.
A pregnant woman coming to a hospital in labor cannot be sent away for any reason until after she has given birth.
Reach and grasp of the legislation expanded mightily to include "emergency conditions" which means whatever a prosecutor deems it, and which include within the hospital's requirement to screen and treat for free anyone who comes within 250 yards of a hospital's main buildings. Some courts have interpreted the 250 yards to begin at the hospital restaurant, apartment house, private medical offices, off campus clinics, diagnostic centers, or primary care centers. Remarkably, the 250-yard radii of the circle of mandatory inclusion include ambulances not even owned by the hospitals.
The hospital also must maintain a back-up on-call system of specialists such as neurosurgeons, cardiovascular surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, OB-GYN and pediatric subspecialists representing every specialty the hospital represents itself as providing to its community.
Failure to adhere to EMTALA stringencies results in a fine per infraction of $25,000 to $50,000, prosecution, decertification actions, and expulsions from Medicare and Medicaid. Enforcement is brisk and punishing.
In essence, a physician is liable for criminal prosecution, as is the medical facility, if for any reason whatsoever the physician or ancillary medical personnel refuse to treat a patient requesting care. Though involuntary servitude is Constitutionally prohibited by the 13th Amendment, any American physician licensed to practice must treat if a patient requests or requires care.
Originally intended to prevent patient "dumping," EMTALA greatly agitates emergency physicians and specialists "on call" because new demanding patients under the law crowd out scheduled patients, and practitioners are required by law to work without pay since government does not fund the strict mandate. Managed care plans pay nothing unless the patient's ultimate diagnosis, not the reasons for coming to the emergency room, fits their criteria. Even Medicare's "prudent layperson's" understanding of an emergency does not always produce recompense. Serious chronic diseases and accidental trauma cases threaten devastating costs to hospitals over extended time. Once arriving, the patient must stay even if reaching "stability" takes months or years.
Congress's General Accounting Office released in June 2001, Emergency Care: EMTALA Implementation and Enforcement Issues reviews "provider uncertainties about EMTALA responsibilities." Thirty-three medical specialty societies petitioned The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2000 to not issue new regulations expanding the already onerous burdens of physicians and hospitals under EMTALA.
Hey El, thought you might like to Help with this. After all you are tracing my postings, maybe you can e-mail your Reps and your Senators about this "Little Problem"
ping
Will post the text of that Amendment, if you wish. It's BS, and the courts have stretched it SO WILDLY out of shape that its authors wouldn't recognise it -- but, until we as a nation make a DELIBERATE decision to emulate Andrew Jackson, especially regarding his comment about John Marshall -- we're stuck.
The question remaining now is only: Is there ANYONE, citizen, politician, whoever, who will stand up on his or her hind legs and say:
''You've MADE your ruling, Your Honour; now, HOW do you propose to enforce it?''
bttt
According to FedGov that child is a citizen, by virtue of how they interpret the 14th Amendment.
HOWEVER...
...the correct answer to anchor babies is in the US Constitution as written. The 14th Amendment was NOT intended to grant citizenship to the children of foreign subjects. Quite the contrary.
The Slaughterhouse Cases are the first Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment on record. The author of the majority opinion is a contemporary of those who drafted and debated the Amendment. The following text is from the majority opinion (about 3/4 of the way down the linked source page):
Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872) (USSC+)For those of you who have seen this post before, sorry for the spam, but this matter is so important that more people need to see it.
Opinions
MILLER, J., Opinion of the Court
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.
Please see Post #12.
That was the 'law' WHEN we used to HAVE law in this nation.
At the moment, any pregnant illegal who breaks her water on US soil saddles ALL of us with her get, for as many years as the little bugger is unable to earn enough to pay for his/her cost to the nation.
Politically incorrect, this view? Not a doubt of it. I confess it freely.
Now, I **know** we understand each other; is there any other problem, regarding this topic, about which you are unclear on my view?
Pleased to be straightforward on any sub-topics you care to name, at your convenience.
And, of course, may I wish you and your family THE very Merriest of Christmases!
Sadly, very sadly, none.
And, of course, may I wish you and your family THE very Merriest of Christmases!
Thank you, and so to you and yours.
Ping
My wife told me she'd read about one of these "Latinas" who stiffed the hospital for the bill for delivering her brat, and then disappeared into the "Latino" "Community".
A few years later, the hospital found her and got her served with papers for default on the debt. In the newspaper article, she was wailing like a fire siren about how "Unfair" it was, and how she was going to be "Impoverished" if she had to pay the bill... Etc... Etc... I guess it's OK to make all of US pay for her to breed like a rabbit though.
Oddly, nobody has made mention of employees of Wal-Mart who also seek gov't medical coverage...
Is there any time left to handle the anchor baby problem? How long will it be before recent illegals reach the 25% mark?
Ping to read later
Nope and it's one of the biggest scams around. It's why so many crossing the Mexican border are unwed pregnant women and girls who know if they make it over in time to give birth, they're set for life --- they'll never have to work, they'll have housing assistance checks, WIC, food stamps, all the free health care they could want. It's something they could never dream of back home.
Wish you could post that story.
We will have lost 80 hospitals in this state in the last 10 years due to bankruptcy and insufficient payments for government mandated health services, even though our population has gone from 20 to 31 million in the last 10 years.
An ER here, a few billion there, a little more crime & poverty - so what. Personally I'm happy to pay the costs associated with illegal immigration to give our businesses a 'leg up' - besides, no one cares about enforcing those old laws anyway. /sarcasm
I read once upon a time there are 'pregnancy holidays' being offered in asia whereby mothers-to-be plan their US vacation around their expected delivery date. Ain't that a scream.
Oh, there's time enough, no doubt. What there ISN'T, or doesn't seem to be, is the political will to handle the problem. Plus the indifference of too many citizens.
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