Posted on 09/24/2009 7:58:27 AM PDT by La Lydia
ATLANTA — If Grady Memorial Hospital succeeds in closing its outpatient dialysis clinic, Tadesse A. Amdago, a 69-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, said he would begin “counting the days until I die.” Rosa Lira, 78, a permanent resident from Mexico, said she also assumed she “would just die.” Another woman, a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, said she could only hope to make it “back to my country to die.”
The patients, who have relied for years on Grady’s free provision of dialysis to people without means, said they had no other options to obtain the care that is essential to their survival. But the safety-net hospital, after years of failed efforts to drain its red ink, is not backing away from what its chairman, A. D. Correll, calls a “gut-wrenching decision”: closing the clinic this month...
Despite a judge’s urging that the two sides negotiate a solution Wednesday, there was no agreement by the end of the day on how to go forward. For the time being, a restraining order keeping the clinic open stands. The judge is considering whether to extend it.
The dialysis unit on Grady’s ninth floor might as well be ground zero for the national health care debate. It is there that many of the ills afflicting American health care intersect: the struggle of the uninsured, the strain of providing uncompensated care, the inadequacy of government support, and the dilemma posed by treating illegal immigrants...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Where are the liberals who care so much about these illegals when it comes to paying for their costs? Why don’t they open their checkbooks and pay the $50 million a year for free dialysis? Oh no, they just expect the rest of us who work to pay for it.
Well, illegal immigrants have bankrupted 10 major hospitals in California in just a few years. Two of them were almost 100 years in business.
Send the illegals home. We can’t continue to provide long term care like dialysis to people who aren’t here legally.
I'd rather provide treatment to the innocent than homosexuals who caused their own problem.
$24 million a year is being spent on illegal alien dialysis here in Vegas. It is simply unsustainable, we aren’t the hospital to the world.
exactly
send the illegals home. sad fact of life as obama pointed out yesteray America is NOT exceptional
If one isn’t on medicaid then that means one has some money. let them spend that first then get them on medicaid
but notice gov’t paid for care doesn’t reimburse enough to cover the actual cost of the care now
why would we think a public option would be better
Exactly so.
The politicians, and the journalists and editors and owners of the elite media who report these things, could pay for this out of their personal fortunes if they really cared about these people.
The truth is that, for them, it is not really about compassion, and not even really about healthcare: it is about power, and it is about their own fortunes and futures in the brave new world they would push upon us.
Make no mistake who these people are.
a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, said she could only hope to make it “back to my country to die.”
We should help her.....
Then take out your checkbook, mortgage your home, etc. and keep the clinic alive. It is easy to be generous with other people's money. We can't afford treatment for those who are here legally let alone become the medical clinic for the world. Medical facilities are being closed because of the burden of illegal aliens, which hurts all of us.
Such is the price of complacency and lack of comprehension regarding illegal activities; even if, this demographic were legitimate, there would still be expenses, loses and liabilities to the public with no underlying cost base.
Speaking of hospital to the world, did you see the post yesterday about one-third of Mexicans telling a poll that they want to immigrate to the U.S.? That would be about 40 million more. We wouldn’t have a single hospital left.
Good point; I believe the concerned are too busy spending their funds on important things…
Foundation for a Secure Political Class, Save the Weasel Foundation, Local Terrorism Association, PETA, Africa Here Now, Americans for Marxism, Friends of Anarchy, National Organization for HIV, Eco-Freak Domination, MoveOn to Abortions, Defend Against Quality Education, National Counsel on the Ugly, Shadow Government Org, Turd World Free Money, Socialist Child Education Org, Reformation of Common Sense, Association of Community Intimidation…
One of the biggest problems with our healthcare system is the abuse it suffers because of non paying ‘immigrants’...but neither side wants to address it.
Exactly; the excuse and cry is lettuce will cost $3 a head if/maybe/could be when market rates are paid for labor. However, when calculations include total social costs, lettuce is calculated at $6.45…so now how inexpensive is that lettuce argument? This is nothing more than a freebie to those that profit from these businesses: privatizing profits and socializing human resource expenses.
A legal immigrant from Nepal told me yesterday that, as in most developing countries, you must pay cash at the door for care. No money, no treatment—simple as that.
She was a bit puzzled when she heard that many people got “free” health care here in the US.
True it isn’t safe to be in a hospital parkink lot at night in the Los Angeles county.
Between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid,” Dr. Madeline Pelner Cosman, “Illegal Aliens and American Medicine”, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol. 10, Number 1 Spring 2005.
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