Immigrants Deported, by US Hospitals

[kerewin21 2]

High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him in the lowlands of Florida.

Luis Alberto Jiménez, an illegal immigrant injured in a car accident in Florida, was treated at a community hospital, which eventually sent him back to Guatemala. He spends most of his days inside a one-room house; only the presence of visitors, who can help him into his wheelchair, gives him the rare chance to get out of bed. Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care.

Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.

What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03dep...amp;oref=slogin

I don't know the answer to this problem, but it sure poses a lot of questions. Of course, there are plenty of uninsured AMERICANS racking up huge hospital bills just like this gentleman's, but hospitals don't have the option of sending them to their own country so they're stuck with them.

[S and S 12]

I wish we could see a better health care system to benifit those that can't afford it, but at the moment it doesn't seem possible

[peejay 327]

I read many stories in the Houston Chronicle about our county's hospital district and the huge financial hit us taxpayers take providing free medical care for illegal aliens in our area. 2/3 of the babies born in Houston/Harris county public hospitals are born to parents that are illegal aliens. Amazing considering that illegal aliens make up only 12+% of the Houston area population. Welcome to third world birthrates in the USA.

There was an illegal alien highlighted in a story that received extensive heart surgery at a cost to Harris county taxpayers (me included) that cost around $1 million. In the interview he stated that the operations will allow him to continue working (illegally of course) and sending money back to his family in Mexico.

Another story highlighted an illegal alien couple from Mexico that gave birth to a severely deformed baby with birth defects that is costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in taxpayer funded medical care. An immigration judge awarded them a hardship permanent residency so they can stay and continue the taxpayer funded treatments for the child that will eventually run into the millions of $. Another reason to end birthright citizenship to babies born to illegal aliens. Almost all of the modern industrialized first world welfare state countries ended birthright citizenship years, if not decades, ago.

That cheap labor ain't so cheap, is it? The crooks that hire these millions of illegal aliens are making out like bandits though.

If the federal government continues to refuse to enforce our border, our immigration laws, and our work authorization laws...they should fork out these billions of $ to our communities that have to pay for the fed's malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

[Marc and Olga 0]

No name, no country, he lives at UMC

Hospital seeks family, ID of man seriously hurt 3 months ago

The Story

[kerewin21 2]

At my hospital we had a gentleman who was in illegal immigrant from the Caribbean who needed a heart transplant. But nobody would pay for the heart transplant, they said it was too expensive. But he was too sick to leave the hospital, so rather than pay $x million for a heart transplant the hospital paid probably the same amount trying to avoid doing the transplant (because they had to keep him around in the intensive care unit for months on end).

It's a difficult situation. I don't generally feel so strongly about providing brief, urgent/emergent care to people who are here illegally; they quickly get better and are contributing (albeit in their own way) to our economy. The people I get caught up on are those who are too sick to work, too sick to be anywhere but a hospital or nursing home, who really are just draining us. Some people say that sending them back to their own country is a death sentence, but by the same logic all of those living in their own country have a death sentence by not having good access to quality medical care. I have gladly put several people on the plane back to where they came from, usually in much better shape than they arrived in.

[MrsCat 6]

Something that made my blood boil as tax-payer last year. I'm not sure if our healthcare system finally just paid the bills, because we've never heard anything further about it:

Baby's mom faces crushing debt

Racquena Thomas is an alert two-month-old with a charming smile, a tiny girl who presents a big ethical conundrum.

She was born at Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital on Feb. 13, with a rare heart defect called hypoplastic left- heart syndrome. Put simply, the left side of her heart failed to develop. Not many years ago, babies born this way died soon after birth. In most parts of the world, they still do.

Children born in Edmonton are lucky. The Stollery Children's Hospital is one of the few centres in Canada that offers surgical treatment for the syndrome. Patients require a series of three surgeries, which redirect blood flow, and allow the right side of the heart to take over much of the work usually done by the left.

. . . . .

But Racquena's mother, Ceciel Knibbs, is a citizen of Jamaica. She came here in December, on a visitor's visa, to see her sister. Because she was pregnant, Knibbs says, she couldn't buy traveller's health insurance. Nonetheless, she decided to stay here to have her baby. She knew she'd have to pay something, but she figured she could afford it. But Knibbs insists she had no idea her baby had a heart defect -- ultrasounds in Jamaica detected no abnormalities.

Now, Knibbs is facing crushing medical bills. Though the doctors who performed Racquena's first operation charged no fees, Capital Health has billed Knibbs $162,576 for the 36 days the baby was in hospital. Each time Racquena gets a checkup, it costs $369.

And the initial February surgery was only a stop-gap. Racquena will need a second surgery in two or three months -- and another one when she's about three. Capital Health has told Knibbs hospitalization costs for the three surgeries will come to $433,536. That doesn't include the costs of the operations or fees for the various physicians.

"I'm so stressed. There's no way I can come up with that kind of money," says Knibbs. "Even if I stayed in Canada and worked, it would take me a lifetime to come up with that kind of money."

But both the Capital Health Authority and the provincial health department are standing firm. Racquena's mother is not a legal resident of Alberta. She's never paid Alberta taxes or health premiums. So Racquena is not covered by Alberta health care. The bills, they say, cannot and will not be waived.

. . . . .

From a utilitarian "the needs of the many must outweigh needs of the few" perspective, it makes no sense to spend this much money to keep one uninsured child alive. Indeed, Capital Health could save more lives if it donated the cost of Racquena's surgery to pay for malaria reduction programs in Africa.

But Racquena Thomas is not some abstract experiment in utilitarian ethics. She's a living, breathing, smiling, growing Canadian child. Sending her to Jamaica now, without follow-up surgeries, without specialized follow-up care, would be a death sentence.

. . . . .

Some people may question the way Racquena became a citizen, the way her mother came here on a visitor's visa, while pregnant, then stayed to have her baby. Still, however Racquena got here, she's won the birth-right lottery. She's not a foreign national who arrived without health insurance. She's a Canadian, with all the rights that implies.

The province and Capital Health are right to be cautious, to be wary of setting a precedent. We don't want to open a floodgate, to signal to disadvantaged people around the world, or just over the border, that they can come here and exploit our public health-care system. We can't expect the public institutions Albertans pay for to treat every desperate international patient with a sob story.

. . . .

Ceciel Knibbs' visa expires in June, about the time Racquena will need her second surgery. Knibbs says she has no wish to stay in Canada. She has two older children waiting for her in Jamaica. And she hates Edmonton's weather.

But if she takes her baby home, she's afraid the child won't survive.

Now, she's contemplating a wrenching choice: leaving her daughter behind and asking her sister, an Alberta resident and Canadian citizen, to take legal guardianship. That way, she hopes the province will pay for the baby's continued care. Meanwhile, she can only hope generous Edmontonians will come forward to help with Racquena's bills.

"I'm still looking for help," says Knibbs. "I just don't know what else to do."

. . . .

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/colu...ab0e1d1&p=1

[aidan80 9]

High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him in the lowlands of Florida.

Luis Alberto Jiménez, an illegal immigrant injured in a car accident in Florida, was treated at a community hospital, which eventually sent him back to Guatemala. He spends most of his days inside a one-room house; only the presence of visitors, who can help him into his wheelchair, gives him the rare chance to get out of bed. Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care.

Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.

What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03dep...amp;oref=slogin

I don't know the answer to this problem, but it sure poses a lot of questions. Of course, there are plenty of uninsured AMERICANS racking up huge hospital bills just like this gentleman's, but hospitals don't have the option of sending them to their own country so they're stuck with them.

Thats the face of capitalism for ye, money and profit before people.

[kerewin21 2]

Something that made my blood boil as tax-payer last year. I'm not sure if our healthcare system finally just paid the bills, because we've never heard anything further about it:

Just wondering what part of it made your blood boil?

For some reason when it's a baby it doesn't bother me as much. The hospital I work at is a world leader at craniofacial surgery, so kids come from all over the world for uncommon operations like separating conjoined twins and severe cleft lip/palate repair. These surgeries are usually paid for by a combination of the hospital donating resources, the physicians providing the services for free, some foundation/charity support, and also the home governments help out a little bit. So the baby described in the story might have had the chance to come to the US for treatment (though more likely than not she would not have gotten treatment at all).

[Steve Y Jessica 1]

And they should be sent back to their own country!! They are ILLEGAL!!!!! Send them back. If they want to be here, there are legal ways, we are all doing it!!

There are all these reports of mothers being seperated from their babies that I read. But there are many, many women that come here to the US when they are about to give birth. So the US will pay for their birth.

SEND THEM BACK!!!!!

[MrsCat 6]

Something that made my blood boil as tax-payer last year. I'm not sure if our healthcare system finally just paid the bills, because we've never heard anything further about it:

Just wondering what part of it made your blood boil?

I had no issues about the baby. Let me make that clear - she is an innocent bystander to her mother's choices in life.

I despise the fact that the mother would have had to lie to get here (she knew she was pregnant at the time she interviewed for her visa yet said nothing), she knew the baby was coming but decided to stay, and now she's asking either Edmontonians for donations or Capital Health to swallow the costs. Those are things that make my blood boil.

There are so many stuggling families in this city and around Alberta who have a tough time to pay for their healthcare premiums. They get billed up the whazoo - and are delayed and denied services and treatments. But this woman decides that she wants a Canadian born child - and now she doesn't want to pony up the dough. That's what bothers me. The Stollery did this surgery was an emergency - that means other scheduled surgeries were pushed aside. Surgeries for children who've been waiting, parents who pay taxes in this country and province. They're told to wait - because someone else selfishly decided that they were more important.

I hope the child is able to stay and get treatment, and as a Canadian citizen these services should be paid for. But anything done in connection to the birth and initial treatment should be billed to the parent. She knew the risks - she said herself that she couldn't get health insurance.

The Stollery does a lot of surgeries for kids around the world who wouldn't get this type of treatment. Capital Health and the hospital decide if they're able to afford the resources and offer assistance where they can. This woman had other options - she just didn't exercise any of them.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

weak

ILLEGAL Immigrants Deported, by US Hospitals

fixed

[Ban Hammer 13,333]

I read many stories in the Houston Chronicle about our county's hospital district and the huge financial hit us taxpayers take providing free medical care for illegal aliens in our area. 2/3 of the babies born in Houston/Harris county public hospitals are born to parents that are illegal aliens. Amazing considering that illegal aliens make up only 12+% of the Houston area population. Welcome to third world birthrates in the USA.

There was an illegal alien highlighted in a story that received extensive heart surgery at a cost to Harris county taxpayers (me included) that cost around $1 million. In the interview he stated that the operations will allow him to continue working (illegally of course) and sending money back to his family in Mexico.

Another story highlighted an illegal alien couple from Mexico that gave birth to a severely deformed baby with birth defects that is costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in taxpayer funded medical care. An immigration judge awarded them a hardship permanent residency so they can stay and continue the taxpayer funded treatments for the child that will eventually run into the millions of $. Another reason to end birthright citizenship to babies born to illegal aliens. Almost all of the modern industrialized first world welfare state countries ended birthright citizenship years, if not decades, ago.

That cheap labor ain't so cheap, is it? The crooks that hire these millions of illegal aliens are making out like bandits though.

If the federal government continues to refuse to enforce our border, our immigration laws, and our work authorization laws...they should fork out these billions of $ to our communities that have to pay for the fed's malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

and people wonder why their medical insurance is so high. because they are subsidizing the illegals.

[Heracles 417]

It is a fact that US taxpayers and hospitals lose millions of dollars each year on unpaid hospital bills from illegal immigrants. Money that could be spent on poor Americans who go without daily.

Edited August 3, 2008 by Aficionado

[Steve Y Jessica 1]

I read many stories in the Houston Chronicle about our county's hospital district and the huge financial hit us taxpayers take providing free medical care for illegal aliens in our area. 2/3 of the babies born in Houston/Harris county public hospitals are born to parents that are illegal aliens. Amazing considering that illegal aliens make up only 12+% of the Houston area population. Welcome to third world birthrates in the USA.

There was an illegal alien highlighted in a story that received extensive heart surgery at a cost to Harris county taxpayers (me included) that cost around $1 million. In the interview he stated that the operations will allow him to continue working (illegally of course) and sending money back to his family in Mexico.

Another story highlighted an illegal alien couple from Mexico that gave birth to a severely deformed baby with birth defects that is costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in taxpayer funded medical care. An immigration judge awarded them a hardship permanent residency so they can stay and continue the taxpayer funded treatments for the child that will eventually run into the millions of $. Another reason to end birthright citizenship to babies born to illegal aliens. Almost all of the modern industrialized first world welfare state countries ended birthright citizenship years, if not decades, ago.

That cheap labor ain't so cheap, is it? The crooks that hire these millions of illegal aliens are making out like bandits though.

If the federal government continues to refuse to enforce our border, our immigration laws, and our work authorization laws...they should fork out these billions of $ to our communities that have to pay for the fed's malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

and people wonder why their medical insurance is so high. because they are subsidizing the illegals.

But these bleeding heart liberals will be the first to comlain about the cost of medical! Then in the next breath say how we need to take care of the medical needs of the world.

[Heracles 417]

But these bleeding heart liberals will be the first to comlain about the cost of medical! Then in the next breath say how we need to take care of the medical needs of the world.

I think they do not understand that you cannot have cheaper health care along with health care access for all. Just no possible unless the doctors and nurses work for free.