Posted on 08/17/2002 1:37:17 PM PDT by GrandMoM
The big health-care debate in Congress this summer was over the wrong issue. Instead of threatening to bankrupt Medicare by forcing the taxpayers to buy prescription drugs for seniors, Congress should relieve the taxpayers and paying-patients of the burden of providing hospital care for illegal aliens. From Florida to California, illegal aliens show up at hospital emergency rooms and the costs are passed along to paying patients and to local taxpayers. The American Hospital Association estimates that the costs of bad-debt and charity care run into the billions.
A Martin County, Florida, hospital has spent $900,000 (with no end in sight) caring for a Guatemalan illegal who appeared at the emergency room two years ago with a brain injury after an automobile accident. He has no money and no family, but somehow he has a lawyer who has successfully prevented deportation to Guatemala.
A Jamaican illegal spent 17 months under care at the same hospital. After he ran up a bill of $500,000, he was finally sent home to Jamaica.
St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach treats one or two illegals a week and Delray Medical Center about 75 a month. Hospitals are required to provide care to anyone who shows up with a life- threatening condition.
Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) has persuaded the General Accounting Office to study the financial costs that illegal aliens impose on hospitals. He says "we need to remedy this problem before we can no longer afford to take care of Americans."
Many Arizona hospitals have to treat automobile accident victims of dangerous driving by what are called "people smugglers." Two Tucson hospitals were stuck with treating a half dozen illegal aliens who were injured in a nighttime crash of their car traveling on the highway at 100 miles an hour.
A San Antonio hospital treated victims suffering from dehydration after up to 70 men, women and children were discovered by police in a tractor-trailer rig at a truck stop. Another tractor-trailer rig loaded with 40 illegal aliens, two of them dead from suffocation, was also found in July in Dallas.
The Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, California, has been caring for a comatose Mexican illegal ever since he got drunk and was struck by a car in May. He can't pay for the care, of course, but his lawyer is fighting his deportation to a Tijuana hospital.
San Diego hospitals had to face the burden of caring for 31 accident victims (not counting the seven who were killed) when a van carrying illegals from Mexico and Brazil crashed going the wrong way on an interstate at night with its headlights turned off.
Some aliens look upon an automobile accident as their entry ticket into the United States. They get treated at an American hospital and then may be released into no one's custody, and no one has any figures on the numbers.
Instead of dealing with these existing health-care burdens, some members of Congress are trying to hit the taxpayers with even more costs for illegal aliens. They are trying to make illegal aliens eligible for in-state tuition rates at publicly funded colleges and universities.
Texas and California are already subsidizing these aliens who have broken our laws while discriminating against students in lawful, taxpaying families from the other 48 states. A student from Arizona, for example, pays four times as much to attend the University of California as an illegal alien.
Last year the taxpayers who finance Medicaid paid the hospital bill for 6,000 illegal aliens to have their babies in Colorado. This totaled $30 million, an average of $5,000 per baby.
Those 6,000 births to illegal aliens are 40 percent of the births paid for by Medicaid in Colorado. Those 6,000 babies immediately became U.S. citizens and qualified for all Medicaid services at a cost that is not even tabulated.
To get immediate care, the illegal only has to say she is "undocumented." Pregnant American mothers can't avoid their birth-of- a-baby expenses so easily.
Denver Health is asking taxpayers to approve a bond issue to pay for a bigger obstetrics unit. The present unit was built for 1,600 births a year but last year it handled 3,500.
This Colorado information was reported by Al Knight of the Denver Post editorial board. He concluded with a fascinating comment: "There are many groups and interests that for one reason or another don't want this information to be available or to be discussed."
He didn't identify the "groups and interests." Who they are would be a good question to ask your Member of Congress, along with why Congress isn't doing its duty to protect Americans from the continued influx of illegal aliens.
....here in California the average Hispanic family has 5 or 6, and none of them speak english!
Are you prepared to send them away in labor, bleeding, having heart attacks?
If you are not, and if you are not just cost-shifting, what "remedy" do you propose?
....no, I am not heartless. I would expect them to be treated until well enough to be deported and reimbursement from Mexico
If you are not, and if you are not just cost-shifting, what "remedy" do you propose
....armed guards at our borders to stop this influx of illegals draining our systems.
Second, illegal aliens are a separate issue. True, they're forcing the closing of emergency rooms and other emergency services, but health care costs would be high anyway.
Third. Tort reform would reduce costs by a fair amount but it would reduce medical care to a bigger crap-shot than presently. There are an awful lot of greedy and incompetent doctors out there - as well as greedy and incompetent lawyers.
It's extremely doubtful that any of the above will come to pass. People will never see it as fair that you should get only what you can pay for on this fundamental, life-and-death issue nor will we be willing to militarize the border and deport the millions of illegals. Doing so would require a full-fledged war with Mexico - and maybe several other countries as well.
Absolutely agree - the best way to lower the cost is to make each customer take out his or her checkbook and pay the doctor. Insurance, and the distance it puts between the consumer and the provider, is probably THE biggest cause of high costs. When the consumer feels as if the care is "free," then there is no consumer pressure to contain cost.
Second, illegal aliens are a separate issue. True, they're forcing the closing of emergency rooms and other emergency services, but health care costs would be high anyway.
Agree on this as well. Between the cost to the public and the consumer to cover "uninsured," and the cost to each consumer for his own procedures that are not "necessary," I suspect that the cost of "unnecessary" services (including tort liability) represents the bigger share of the total health care expenditure.
Third. Tort reform would reduce costs by a fair amount but it would reduce medical care to a bigger crap-shot than presently. There are an awful lot of greedy and incompetent doctors out there - as well as greedy and incompetent lawyers.
I'm not sure tort reform is the answer here. Patients should have the right to sue the pants off incompetent and negligent health care providers. How we, as a society, decide what constitutes "incompetent" and/or "negligent" may be an issue, but the threat of tort liability does put pressure on the health-care industry to police its own. Maybe the answer here is also away from insurance, so that the individual practitioner risks his or her own future in the event of malpractice, instead of passing the buck off to a malpractice insurer.
It's extremely doubtful that any of the above will come to pass. People will never see it as fair that you should get only what you can pay for on this fundamental, life-and-death ue nor will we be willing to militarize the border and deport the millions of illegals. Doing so would require a full-fledged war with Mexico - and maybe several other countries as well.
But if the cost inflation is not due to treating illegal/uninsured, but rather in treating the rest of us, then even getting rid of the illegal/uninsured will not solve the health-care cost problem.
Actually, the situation is worse than that. Since government meddling has over the years discouraged people from becoming health care practitioners, the supply has been reduced and so the costs have increased even beyond the amount predicted by the 'squeezed balloon' metaphor.
Stabilizing the system (largely by getting government OUT) isn't going to be pleasant for anyone, but until the country can do so it will be living on borrowed time.
We are the cash cow for the third world, and until we elect a President and a Congress who has the guts to put a stop to it, we'll go broke, the takers will outnumber the givers.
It's not only health care for illegals we're forced to pay for, homeowners will have to cough up more money to build new schools (this is on the coming Los Angeles ballot) because illegals are causing our schools to burst at the seams, and education to American kids takes a nose dive. They're collecting welfare and food stamps, and some even manage to get housing assistance money. Why should American taxpayers be forced to pay for all this when we're already struggling with the highest taxation in history?
Clinton started it, and Bush is continuing it. Our American culture is fading into the woodwork, and we're becoming the new slaves of America.
Then politicians like Kyl come along and propose passing the costs along to the federal government, as if that money isn't gouged from the taxpayers, too.
He's a U.S. Senator. Why doesn't he urge the Governor to send the National Guard to the border and order local law enforcement to assist in deportations?
War with Mexico? Maybe Guatemala too? Not much to be afraid of here.
Illegals aren't the only problem. Once the illegal has a citizen baby, other family members can legally immigrate through family reunification, one of the largest groups we see here are immigrants over 65 years of age who come to get on Medicaid and SSI. It's legal because you only need to be 125% over the poverty level to "sponsor" an immigrant and you never have to intend to pay any costs of them. Many legals are ending right up on welfare programs.
Unless all those countries convert to Islam first, the problem with that is...???
I have always said that Bush didn't create the immigration problem but he can darn sure put a stop to it. But he won't.
It will be interesting to see who Bush puts in to replace Ziglar. If he does another Ziggy number I probably won't vote in 2004 or at best I won't vote republican. I definately won't vote for Bush.
Good article.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.