In my view, the hospitals have no choice but to serve everyone that comes through their doors. Citizenship should not be an issue. Unfortunately it looks like many more hospitals will have to close those doors before all of the United States wakes up to realize it’s the borders that need to close.

oakpack on December 3, 2007 at 5:43 PM

Your thinking is why 80 hospitals in California have closed because Illegals used the emergency room as their Doctors office and then refused to pay the bill.

I live in California and a trip to the emergency room that are still open takes hours to get triaged let alone get treatment. My property taxes were just increased to keep our local hospital open with a bond issue for the Hospital.

I took my 82 year old mother to the ER and had to wait 6 hours for her to be looked at by a doctor and we had insurance including Medicare part B.

The waiting room was at least 70% Hispanic.

Don’t tell me that citizenship should not be an issue.

Bryan is correct in clearly defining the problem above. This article states the following:

And what usually happens is that liberal state governors like Rod Blagojevich of Illinois grant access to illegal aliens to the State’s Medicaid program, which then quickly puts a huge financial drain on an already drained government-funded tax-payer funded program.

Governor Rod then marches in parades, and announces to the media that he has “solved” the problem of health care for illegals in the state of Illinois.

But the bottom line is that at the end of the day, the hospitals receive pennies in financial Medicaid reimbursement. The ugly reality is that financial expenses for illegal aliens are high, but the governor, by state fiat, has reimbursed the hospitals with drastically lower revenues. The hospitals are then forced to cut staff. They then begin “down-sizing” non-clinical positions, and after that they start eliminating non-urgent clinical staff positions.

Illegal immigration is an economic nightmare for hospitals.

Remember, “there is no free lunch in economics.”

Somebody is paying for this.

That’s opportunism at best, theft at worst. Where’s the concern about being fair to people who have paid taxes to make things like hospitals possible?

Boot is an idiot “…Studies of the net economic effect of illegal immigration show mixed results.”

Is that why the CBO’s studies shows that wages for unskilled workers have declined?

Everyone says we need illegal workers, but they are only just under 5% of the total labour force and aren’t a majority in any field – not even farm workers (where they make up 24% of the labour force)!

If illegal immigration is so benign, then why is unemployment for unskilled labourers (legally here), on the rise?

Is that why of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens here, approximately 7 million work; who supports the other 4 million? Not the minimum wage worker.

Is this why the poverty rate among Hispanics (they comprise the largest percentage of the illegal alien population), is skyrocketing – up 162% since 1980, and the Office of the President says the average wage for a Mexican national living in the US is $9?

If illegals pay into the system and contribute via taxes, why is an estimated $20 billion annually sent back to Mexico? That’s $20 billion that doesn’t go in to schools, hospitals or the US economy in general.

Never mind the anecdotal stories in our own lives; schools overcrowded, curriculum moving toward bi-lingual/ESL focused, hospitals in dire shape, crowded roads, water shortages (in some states), infrastructure stressed, difficulty finding employment, property taxes rising…

Yet illegal immigration isn’t that much of a stress? Come on…

I thought in this country that if you didn’t have insurance you were just kicked to the curb.
LakeRuins on December 3, 2007 at 3:13 PM

Or take hostages at Hillary’s campaign office to try and tell her you cant afford your meds because you don’t have insurance.

because as we all know he couldnt get a hold of her at the clinton news network when he called before.

do you know what’s funny about this? during Thanksgiving, KHOU, a CBS affiliate, did a story on how Americans are going to Mexico for healthcare because of the affordability. KHOU is not known for being a balanced news outlet, espectially on the topic of illegal aliens.

Oh, dear, that’s playing with fire for those Americans. I’ve processed their claims at the evil insurance company and you would not believe the crazy treatments Mexico prescribed for cancer, etc. I realize it’s cheaper, but it’s also unproven treatments that are more likely to do harm than good. Hydrogen peroxide as an IV treatment – dude was lucky he survived…

(off my healthcare soapbox).

also contribute a lot to society via sales taxes
Really? How much “sales tax” can these poor people, getting paid less for Jobs-Americans-Won’t-Do and sending every last unneeded penny home actually contribute?

(Apologies for that run-on sentence)

Frozen Tex on December 3, 2007 at 3:35 PM

In most of Texas, the sales tax is around 8.5%, and a lot of food items (basically anything that has to be ‘cooked’) are exempt. Of course there is a hefty tax on gasoline and on cigarettes. School clothes and things like back packs are tax exempt, provided you buy them on the weekend in August when the tax is waived on those items.

I really do wonder how much social security tax is paid by illegals. To the extent such is actually withheld from their pay, remember that the employer is matching that amount. So, the tax paying employer is paying just as much in SS tax as the illegal is. And of course the state or county hospital gets none of that money.

Bottom line to me is that there is no way to figure that taxes paid by illegals constitute more than a drop in the bucket of what it costs to run a county hospital system.

This whole “no cancer care for illegals” scare-talk reminds me of what happens here in San Antonio every time there is a nickle’s worth of shortfall in city revenues. What does the City Council threaten to cut? Why public libraries and school crossing guards, of course.

The Government of the country of origin should be billed accordingly and the patient should be repatriated on release.

Illegal aliens come here because they can’t afford it in Mexico, Americans are going to Mexico because it’s affordable.

why isn’t the Mexican government offering free healthcare or affordable healthcare to its citizens instead of encouraging them to come to America?

also contribute a lot to society via sales taxes

I’m not sure how much they’re paying in sales taxes, either. I mean, a certain amount of sales taxes are unavoidable, like on groceries and such. But based on the last few sales I’ve made through Craigslist, I’d say that it is fairly common for those who don’t speak English well to buy many of their big-ticket items used and off the books (not that I’m lumping everyone who has trouble speaking English into the illegal category, but it’s a starting place). I doubt they’re buying appliances and furniture and used cars through Craigslist for the purpose of avoiding sales taxes–that’s just a bonus. They’re looking for bargains, and Craigslist is a great place to find them. I’ve just been surprised at how many people respond to Craigslist ads who can’t speak much English. And lots of people buying most or all of their furniture and appliances and other big-ticket items for cash and without sales tax is a huge amount of sales tax that the local government does not collect when it all adds up.

Again, we’re talking about long-term care here, where one patient can easily rack up millions of dollars in expenses that the hospital won’t get reimbursed by insurance or anyone else for. The problem introduce by this is very simple, and can be rendered by the phrase “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

RACIST!!!!1

also contribute a lot to society via sales taxes

Really? How much “sales tax” can these poor people, getting paid less for Jobs-Americans-Won’t-Do and sending every last unneeded penny home actually contribute?

(Apologies for that run-on sentence)

…because illegal immigrants, while making use of some government services, also contribute a lot to society via sales taxes and other means without collecting Social Security, unemployment or other benefits available to legal residents

Wait… since “sales taxes and other means” obviously bring in so much money that states can–nay, must–provide expensive cancer treatments to anyone that wants it regardless of legal status, then why should any legal American citizen ever pay FICA or unemployment insurance taxes?

According to Das Boot, the majority of legal and illegal citizens use those services–meaning there’s plenty of cash for “manageable” public services. If that were true, then why aren’t schoolteachers pulling in $100K starting salaries and every little girl dreaming of being a dialysis technician/nurse rather than the next Hannah Montana?

Galveston hospital may cut cancer care for illegal immigrants

Can’t wait for the High Reverend Hucksterocchio to say that if elected president, neither his soul nor Chuck Norris would permit that.