California taxpayers are sick of this. I see no reason to continue this idiotic practice because it only encourages more illegal aliens to come here for everything they can suck from the system. It may be harsh, but it's going to have to be done. Illegals like your example should only be accorded the minimal care actually required to enable transport to a Mexican hospital (helicopter transit would probably be far cheaper than the entire medical bill).
I would think these kinds of highly complex cases are relatively few, though horribly expensive. The real money problem would appear to be with the daily flood of illegals choking our ERs for routine medical care.
Unfortunately getting a hospital in Mexico to accept such a patient is impossible. Nobody is more sick of this than us guys in the front line who bust our butts off taking care of these high acuity, high liability risk cases on a daily basis and not getting paid. But you know what, there are also millions more of uninsured Americans who show up very sick to the ER's and are receiving free care as well. Welcome to the ER, affectionately known as the dumping ground, but also the safety net of our American society. Until the law changes to where hospitals and healthcare providers can have some essence of sovereign immunity in taking Emergency Room calls, we will continue to practice CYA defensive medicine.
The problem goes beyond that, specialists are running away from hospital and resigning their clinical privileges because afterall, why the heck take unattached ER calls on uninsured patients, who are typically sicker because they have not had routine maintenance care, with higher acuity and hence higher liability risks, and not get paid for it? That is why surgeons and many other specialists are flocking to the outpatient surgical centers to perform elective cases on their paying/insured clienteles because hospitals typically require them to take unattached ER calls in order to have clinical privileges. Trying showing up to one of these surgeons or specialist clinic office and tell them you can't pay for the visit. They'll show you the front door out. Why? Because unlike ER's of hospitals they are not required by federal and state laws to provide medical screening and stabilization of patients who show up to their front doors. Hey, it's only capitalism at work in our healthcare industry.