Posted on 06/04/2007 8:01:32 AM PDT by Gopher Broke
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:
1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963
2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after
3. Jack Ruby-who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later.. by coincidence
On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day---every day)
A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants. That's 11,200 “anchor babies” born every year just in Dallas. According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 newborns in 2004, but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.
The average patient in Parkland's maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay. OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do.
Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE.
The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her 3rd child---her previous 2 were also born at Parkland. Her first 2 deliveries were free and the Mexican native was grateful, because it would have cost $200 each to have them born in Mexico. This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and then $100 for the delivery, but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away. (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.)
How long has this been going on? What are the long-term affects?
Well, another subject of the article was a lady born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the U.S. illegally---now she is having her own child there as well. (That's right, she's technically a U.S. citizen.) These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, diapers and formula.
Most of these things are available to American citizens as well, but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable.
Because these women are illegal immigrants they don’t have to provide any type of legitimate identification---no proof of income. On the other hand -- An American citizen has to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income---an illegal immigrant needs only claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word.
My husband is a pilot for the United States Navy (yes, he fought in Iraq) and while the health care we get is good, we Navy wives don't get any of these perks! Car seats? Diapers? Not so much. So my question is this: Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens? Yes it does!
As I mentioned earlier, the care I (Wife/family of a veteran) receive is adequate, but it's bare bones, meat and potato medical care---not top of the line.
An illegal alien’s medical care is free---simply because they are illegal immigrants!?!? Once again, there is no way or interest in verifying their income.
Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County residents who earn less than $40,000 per year, but they have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job ….. Yeah, the 'free' care is not easy to come by for Americans)
During the aforementioned period, there were approximately 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they didn’t qualify for free treatment because they were US Citizens that resided outside of Dallas County. So the hospital is going to sue them! Illegals get it all free! But U.S. citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this?
As if that isn't annoying enough, the illegal alien/immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was required to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a great injustice to her.
In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement.
I have to end my article here as I have to go buy a car seat for my newborn.
Quote of the Day: "Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again."
-Grover Cleveland
I will not say anything, because anything I say is going to be takes as racist, immigration hating. Of which I am neither.
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.
The problem is complicated in Texas because the state Constitution says every county will maintain a medical facility for the treatment of the "indigent." County revenues in Texas come from property taxes. So this situation is bankrupting many smaller Texas counties, and causing huge problems for property taxpayers in places such as El Paso, where every single pregnant woman in Juarez staggers across the bridge as soon as she goes into labor so she can have an anchor baby. Back in the '90s, El Paso County's Thomason hospital refused to give its illegal patient numbers not only to the media, but to Congress. Congress' response to this was to pass legislation providing funding for the "impacted" hospital districts without any explanatory information as to the need. And let's be clear, NONE of that funding was for the benefit of American citizens, although they are the ones footing the bill.
Bottom line, no matter how the media tries to BS this, the tax payer and those with insurance are carrying the burden of those who are uninsured and the true costs for the illegals is not captured because no one really wants to look to hard. I doubt you can even find accurate metrics on the subject because it’s “taboo” to investigate it or even discuss it, although anyone with eyes and common sense knows very well what is going on. Yet have you heard Bush mention the pressure on our health care system? What newspaper is telling the story? What hospital administration is volunteering the information? The health-care provided costs money, and this is simply rolled over to others with insurance and partially reimbursed through the state, which still gets the money through taxes. The irony of those who argue that some form of national health-care will solve the problem of rising costs in health-care and the number of uninsured is that it their proposal still does not address at least a large part of the true cause, those with under the table jobs, paying no taxes for the most part, still won’t pay into that national (AKA social) health care system either; even with the Hillery plan in effect. It's all smoke and mirrors that sounds good, but avoids the real issue. Illegals are a real burden on our social services such as education, health-care, our justice system as well as other community aspects. The fact that Juan mows someones lawn for very little or that he'll pick strawberry's for $5 an hour is nice, but that does not include the true cost of what he costs society and this nation as a whole. That same argument could be used for pouring dioxin into the sewer, after all it saves me money!
This madness can only hope to end if we start billing Mehico for the healthcare of their citizens (ya, right).
BTTT
Maybe Ted Kennedy could come up with some BILL or ORDER TO PAY, and get some free oil from Mexico for all of the medical work it has done for it’s citizens for free...not a bad idea, at all.
Maybe Ted Kennedy could come up with some BILL or ORDER TO PAY, and get some free oil from Mexico for all of the medical work it has done for it’s citizens for free...not a bad idea, at all.
“This madness can only hope to end if we start billing Mehico for the healthcare of their citizens (ya, right).”
I’ve heard that could lead to war: if we refused to accept more aliens, aided & abetted by their government in invading the USA, enforced our southwestern border and presented the costs to Mexico.
So what? Then we could seek reparations . . .
But honestly, it’s a lot easier for the most powerful nation in the history of the world to simply knuckle-under to an army of peasants and give them everything they demand.
The fate of the immigration bill comes down to Senate Republicans’ leader, Mitch McConnell........”The only thing that can save us now is if McConnell made an appeal to Republicans that this thing is out of control and we need to step back from it.......”said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican. “He could do that....”..... Debate on the bill resumes today, and Republican leaders will have to decide quickly...........snipped from:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1844535/posts
Jam McConnell’s phone today. Be polite.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1844535/posts#6
McConnell, Mitch- (R - KY)
361-A RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2541
mcconnell.senate.gov/contact_form.cfm
1. an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.
2. a person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others without giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others.
3. (in ancient Greece) a person who received free meals in return for amusing or impudent conversation, flattering remarks, etc.
[Origin: 1530–40; < L parasītus < Gk parásītos one who eats at another's table, orig. adj.: feeding beside, equiv. to para- para-1 + sǐt(os) grain, food + -os adj. suffix]
bump
All my thanks to Ted (the beached whale) Kennedy regarding this matter. He sits on his fat ass in his coumpound knowing anything he does will not affect his fortune. Meanwhile, the rest of us get handed the bill for taking care of all the illegals he and the Democrats want for their new socialistic and poor voting base. Mr. Kennedy, go pound sound in your a*%!
You forgot:
4. Democrat voter.
OMG...the same thing happened to me when I gave birth to my 2nd child. We had no insurance at the time and luckily, we had the means to pay! We had no problems with this; we knew beforehand. I was 31, and only 3 other babies were born while I was in the hospital, and all 3 had no husbands and all 3 were on welfare. I was asked by a 'social worker' to participate in an after-baby exercise class as the leader and I accepted. When we went to the room, she discovered that I was NOT on welfare (in front of the other 3 girls, mind you,) and told me that I had to pay!! I had brought NO cash with me, WHY?? She ORDERED me to leave the room and I was NOT allowed to participate. I was HUMILIATED because I WASN'T on welfare (LOL) and left the room holding back tears until I got back to my room. With hormones raging, I closed my curtain and quietly cried. My nurse came into my room and asked me why I wasn't in the exercise room and I burst into tears. She was ANGRY and when I left that hospital with my baby, (of course they WOULDN'T let me take my baby without PAYING first,) she had given me enough formula & diapers to last me 6 months!
To save money, I had natural childbirth and those 3 women were whiners and complainers....."give me this, give me that, I need pain meds, the food sucks," and on and on, driving the nurses crazy!
I don't care that you were no longer active....you shouldn't have had to pay one damn dime for your baby!
Thanks for sharing YOUR horror story about life in Amerika, comrade.
That includes our turncoat President. Told ya I shoudn't have said anything.
Thanks for the kind words.
I skate very close to the thin ice when it comes to expressing my feelings about the ongoing destruction of this country.
I’ve been banned from FR a few times when I let more hang out than I probably should have about where I KNEW this guy Bush was headed. The Bushbots — their numbers now reduced by what even THEY see happening — attacked in full force when I told one of them that there IS no knight on a white stallion coming to save us. We will have to figure out how to do that on our own. The politicians — with exceptions you can count on one hand — have absolutely NO interest in us except to make certain that they pander to enough of the growing crowd of “entitlement recipients” (aka “welfare bums”) and get them to the polls on election day to get their tickets punched.
Some of us have been warning that this is where we were being taken for over 30+ years. MOST folks who heard us say those things laughed or waved their hand and uttered that most dangerous of phrases: “Why, THAT could never happen here!”
Sadly, now that it MAY be too late to pull back by other than very extraordinary means, most of them have stopped laughing.
I fear that my 6 grandchildren will never know the America I knew as a child.
I’m seriously considering cremation to prevent them from digging me up to spit in my face for not doing more to turn the tide.
Be safe — and KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON. And if someone criticizes you for speaking what’s on your heart — and SHOULD be plainly obvious to those with eyes and brains — the fault lies in them.
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