Posted on 12/24/2006 8:59:53 PM PST by NormsRevenge
More than 100,000 undocumented women each year bear children in California with expenses paid by Medi-Cal, according to state reports.
Such births and related expenses account for more than $400 million of the nearly $1 billion that the program spends annually on health care for illegal immigrants in California, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing state reports.
California long has been one of the more generous states in offering such benefits to illegal immigrants, covering everything from pregnancy tests to postpartum checkups.
Many illegal immigrants who might otherwise shy away from government services view care associated with childbirth as safe to seek.
"I wasn't afraid at all," said Sandra Andrade, an illegal immigrant from Colombia who recently gave birth at a Los Angeles hospital. "I'd always heard that pregnant women are treated well here."
Nationally, a debate is simmering about the costs of providing medical care to illegal immigrants.
Anti-illegal immigration groups argue that "birthright" U.S. citizenship for babies born in America is an incentive for illegal immigrants to have their children here.
"I think most Americans think that while they certainly don't want to do anything to harm children you cannot have a policy that says anybody in the world come here and have a baby and we have a new American," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, an immigration control group based in Washington, D.C.
Prenatal care is one of the most controversial aspects of providing health care to illegal immigrants.
While labor and delivery long have been considered emergencies, entitled to some federal reimbursement, federal officials have often balked at covering prenatal care. Generally, the state and federal governments share the cost of Medicaid programs, called Medi-Cal in California.
Advocates of such coverage say it's cheaper to pay for prenatal care than risk complications that could saddle the government with huge medical bills.
"Without prenatal care, there's a serious risk that a child will be born with severe disabilities," said Lucy Quacinella, a lobbyist for the Los Angeles-based social service nonprofit group Maternal and Child Health Access. "The cost of caring for that child over a lifetime is astronomical when you compare the cost of having provided the prenatal care."
Still, investing in pregnant illegal immigrants is costly.
Births and prenatal care are the biggest single outlay by Medi-Cal for illegal immigrants' health care, with the rest going for various other emergency treatments, limited breast and cervical cancer treatment, abortions and some nursing home care, according to the state.
In Los Angeles County's public and private hospitals, undocumented women accounted for 41,240 Medi-Cal births in 2004, roughly half the deliveries covered by the public program.
In the four county-run hospitals alone, undocumented women and their newborns will receive more than $20 million in delivery, recovery, nursery and neonatal ICU services this year, according to a county estimate.
This is 100,000 kids that the American taxpayers have to raise and support every year. Wake up America! Time to smell the coffee! The "war on poverty" is over. WE LOST!! Poverty won!
And our broken systems declares everyone of the 100,000 babies to be American citizens. No country can survive such insanity and disregard for supreme law.
"As California goes, so goes the country."
It doesn't matter if it actually works, or not.
All you need is to convince enough people that it's Free Stuff, and that's where we're headed.
Bow down, ye serfs, and worship the Stategod!
We have a nursing and medical crisis but can afford to pay for illegals? Just disgusting!!! I would fly pregnat women into Mexico city and leave them at the airport!
No kidding. Both parties support it, too.
My niece is an OB/GYN who took her pre-med at HAAAAVVAAAAADDD! Needless to say, she emerged from that experience a FLAMING, BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL.
Upon completing her medical training at yet another liberal university, she interned at a hospital near the border in San Diego.
It was there that a mystical transformation took place: She began to connect the heavy deductions from the GROSS EARNINGS for which she busted her butt for as many as 72 virtually sleepless hours in a row with the taxis and jalopies regularly sliding to the curb in front of the ER.
Many of them contained pregnant illegals who won the race to deliver their babies HERE. She caught many of those babies who, under the current -- and ERRONEOUS -- interpretation of the 14th Amendment were IMMEDIATELY NEW AMERICANS. The mother – who, obviously, could not care for the child if she were back in her native land -- could not be deported now even if the INS and the political bosses WANTED her deported . And as the mother of a new US citizen, the woman could remain here for about as long as she cared to – and that was usually for life.
Most of those patients were welfare recipients and the deliveries were charity cases: The bill for the hospital’s – and HER services – were routinely spread over the bills of those who DO pay. And what the other users of those facilities don't cover went back to the taxpayers.
And since my niece was now a taxpayer, they were costing HER.
And while she may not exactly be a libertarian, today she’s now a LOOONNNNG way from Haaaavaaaaaad.
And just so the bleeders who might see this don’t think me some sort of ethnocentric bigot, I submit this problem is MORE than just about illegals.
Before my oldest daughter was born at University Hospital in Cleveland in 1967, I sat in the main lobby as welfare mother-to-be after welfare mother-to-be shuffled through the door to the maternity ER for THEIR free deliveries.
Before WE could take OUR daughter home, I had to cough up over 3 grand. And that was a great deal of dough in 1967, especially for a guy just out of the USAF.
As I wrote the check, I remembered the magazine article I’d recently read by a hospital administrator from Massachusetts who admitted that all US hospitals practiced a form of medical Marxism, spreading the costs of care for indigents over the bills of those who DO pay for care. Given the move to socialism here, it probably will never be otherwise: Not counting Byzantine complexity and confusion, government produces – and has -- NOTHING unless it first takes it from some PERSON. SOMEBODY ALWAYS PAYS.
Look, I have a big enough problem paying for the 3rd and 4th generation slackers and welfare bums who were BORN here.
It’s time we stopped paying for those who were not.
"More than 100,000 undocumented women each year bear children in California with expenses paid by Medi-Cal"
Hey California, I've got a bet going and I'm hoping you don't let me down. You see I'm betting you go bankrupt trying to support immigrants legal and illegal before South American countries run out of poor,uneducated people to send to your state !!!
What's to debate?
Read recently that illegals are dropping 360,000 anchor babies per year!
Good post. As a native here in San Diego, am sure it didn't take long for your niece to connect the dots.
Besides the medical, and other areas the illegals are costing San Diego County mega millions a year.
Don't be such a smart ass
Nothing new about this. It has been going on since at least the Amnesty of 1986; probably long before.
We seem to take an awful long time to worry about something that is unlikely to change.
If an American citizen walks into a hospital lacking ability to pay, they get medical treatment, too.
Medical providers give services first, worry about pay later, in the case of "indigents." Citizen or not.
There's a quote which Mel Gibson used at the beginning of Apocalypto to the effect of "Great civilizations are never conquered until they are first destroyed from within."
Our generosity of spirit will hollow us out. "Free Stuff" will be the death of us. Twenty or thirty years and the American Southwest will revert to its former owners. Last in, first out.
unfortunately, the constitution has that written in to it's 14th amendment
Simple solution: Build hospitals,
in a designated "no man's land" --
the strip of land paralleling the
border (same strip, where your rights
are in limbo, and where you have
to prove your citizenship, to enter
the country legally). And sent pregnant
illegals there.
Avoids the "anchor mom" and 18 years
of free schooling, health, and
welfare services. Pays for itself!
I read a similiar article in the Daily News....they say the hospitals make more money off Medi Cal than private insurance, so they dont care either way.
One lady interviewed was astonished her baby was "free"....she has no insurance, but runs an exporting business to South America (cash only mind you)...
bump
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