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But Tom Tancredo wants the illegals to get their emergency care for free. And that helps make him "an outspoken anti-immigration advocate."

The 'Hippocratic Oath' would be violated if any hospital turned away someone...anyone.... because they don't have the ability to pay. Doctors/hospitals worldwide are held to this creedo.

That being said, I do agree that travel insurance should be mandatory and proof presented by all visitors at the port of entry.

The 'Hippocratic Oath' would be violated if any hospital turned away someone...anyone.... because they don't have the ability to pay.

In 1931, Winston Churchill was run over on Fifth Avenue and almost died because of being turned down by a hospital due to his being too injured to explain how he would pay. We live in kinder gentler times, but not because of the Hippocratic Oath, which requires docs to donate to their med school while saying nothing about donating health care. See: Hippocratic Oath -- Classical Version.

That being said, I do agree that travel insurance should be mandatory and proof presented by all visitors at the port of entry.

Sounds good, although swiping a credit card at the border showing at least, say, $5000 of available credit might be an alternative for the wealthy. And I wouldn't even mind some kind of intergovernmental agreement with countries such as the UK which already today have an official policy of providing free hospital care to legitimate foreign tourists in case of life-threatening emergencies. Of course, this is all dreaming given that we don't even keep track of whether they left on tme so we would know that their insurance expired.

<< The 'Hippocratic Oath' would be violated if any hospital turned away someone...anyone.... because they don't have the ability to pay. Doctors/hospitals worldwide are held to this creedo. >>

What absolute rubbish.

Every year, all over the world, including in Mexico and in every other central and south American Hell hole, millions of people who cannot pay up front and/or establish gold-plated insurance bona fides -- even those needing immediate trauma care -- are turned away from hospitals -- and as often as not die within a hospital's precinct.

Recently a man who was attacked by criminals and shot several times died, after having been refused emergency room treatment, outside a hospital within fifty miles of where I am sitting [In Asia] because the people who brought him in were unable to pay or even to establish his identity or nationality. [He was unconscious] And scores of motor accident victims die every day in this country for the same reason.