President Bush by his negligence or ignorance is allowing
Illegal Aliens to step to the front of the line in the United States Medical System.
Emergency Rooms broke or charging legals more.
PART ONE of a 5 Part Full News Report
Mexican ambulance companies are now instructing their drivers to take uninsured patients
across the border to the United States. Might as well be George Bush instructing them with
his lack of enforcement of the federal rules and regulations he swore to uphold.
For each of the last three years, 60 percent of hospitals in New York
lost money. State hospitals lost a total of $1.7 billion in uncompensated care. Yet the
state is offering free insurance coverage to 167,000 legal immigrants, at a cost of about
$10 million. Immigrants head straight to the Jamaica Hospital, in Queens, New York, after
landing at JFK or La Guardia. The hospital buys plane tickets and to send some of the ill
immigrants back home, sometimes buying extra tickets for nurses to serve as escorts
Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals gave almost $2 billion in free
emergency and short-term care to uninsured patients, a large portion are illegal aliens.
Chicago's Alivio Medical Center provides $1 million a year in
uncompensated care and estimates that more than half of its 20,000 annual patients are
illegal aliens
Minnesota county commissioners say that the cost of medical care for
uninsured immigrants is too high for local government to bear without federal help.
Minnesota expects a $4.2 billion budget shortfall over the next two years
North Carolina has about $1.4 billion in unreimbursed hospital expenses
annually. Every month, a Medicaid emergency services program sees 220 new cases involving
immigrants, many of whom are illegal, at a cost of $32 million.
According to the Texas Hospital Association, Texas hospitals spent $393
million treating illegal aliens in 2002 alone and increasing yearly with $225 million to
be paid by taxpayers. Texas, facing a $10 billion two-year state budget shortfall, plans
to roll back Medicaid and coverage for children under the State Children's Health
Insurance Program to the minimum levels mandated by law. Texas attorney general John
Cornyn issued a legal opinion stipulating that federal law bans hospitals from using tax
dollars to provide non-emergency care to illegal immigrants. However, Harris County- the state's largest county, which includes Houston- announced it would ignore the opinion and continue
to provide taxpayer-subsidized non-emergency care to illegal aliens. In El Paso, 40
percent of residents have no health insurance and the illegal alien problem is rampant,
Thomason General Hospital is seeking a 12.5 percent property tax increase to help offset
its uncompensated care costs. The facility lost $32 million in uncompensated costs in
2001, not including an additional $49.7 million in charity care for patients whom the
hospital knew up front could not pay their bills. An administrator at Texas's Brownsville
Medical Center estimated that his hospital spends $500,000 a month treating illegal
aliens.
In Florida, if Medicaid costs continue to increase at the current rate,
the costs would consume the entire state budget by 2015
non-citizens amass unpaid bills of more than $40 million a year at Florida hospitals.
Broward County collects $190 million annually in property taxes to offset the $453 million
lost in uncompensated care. The Florida Hospital Association reports that hospitals in the
state "expended considerable time and effort transferring the patient back to their
own country or finding appropriate long-term care. Hospitals frequently paid to return the
patient to his/her home country and/or absorbed the cost of any follow up care
California Over 60 emergency rooms have closed and locally funded
initiatives in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Riverside
counties now pay for health insurance for illegal immigrants in those jurisdictions.
One-third of the patients treated by the Los Angeles county health system each year are
illegal aliens. Los Angeles, a magnet for legal and illegal immigration, is a prime
example of immigration overwhelming a health system. Since the early 1990s, the Los
Angeles County Department of Health Services (LACHS) has been on the verge of collapse
several times, saved only by bailouts from the federal government. LACHS bears the burden
of providing treatment for two million people without health insurance and faces an
anticipated $300 million deficit, accumulating to nearly $800 million over the next five
years. 16 health clinics and two hospitals were forced to close their doors to everyone
LACHS is sharply curtailing services at dozens of county clinics, hospitals, and emergency
rooms, which serve primarily the working poor and indigent. If no additional state or
federal funds are forthcoming, county health officials have proposed closing emergency,
trauma, and in-patient services at three hospitals, along with two-thirds of the county
health center clinics and 100 private outpatient clinics. "If these critical county
trauma centers are closed, there is absolutely no doubt that injured people, both with and
without medical insurance, will die unnecessarily because the other trauma centers are
simply too far away," says Dr. Robert Hockberger, chair of Harbor-UCLA's Department
of Emergency Medicine
Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista estimates that about one quarter of patients who
are uninsured and don't pay their bills are illegal aliens. The hospital loses $7 million
to $10 million in uncompensated costs.
In Santa Cruz hospitals are so crowded that they regularly close their doors to new
emergency patients. When they're open, patients often have to wait up to ten hours. 30 to
40 percent of the Community Clinic of Orange County's patients in Santa Ana are illegal
immigrants Regional Medical Center and Pioneers Memorial Hospital in El Centro, California
loses over $1.5 million annually treating illegal immigrants.
Arizona, facing a $1 billion state budget shortfall in FY 2004 Southeast
Arizona Medical Center- has filed for bankruptcy
Cochise's Copper Queen Community Hospital spends two-thirds of its operating income on
uncompensated care for immigrants, a factor administrators say played a role in the
hospital's decision to close its long-term care unit. University Medical Center in Tucson
loses over $7 million a year caring for immigrants The five largest health care providers
in Maricopa County loses over 400 million every year in uncompensated care.
PART TWO>
Medical Emergency Rooms NOW under the Bush
Administration |
