Illegal Aliens Stopped from Stealing Limited Health Care for Americans
Posted on Tuesday, December 04 @ 10:26:04 EST
Topic: Diseases Biohazards illegal immigration
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 ALIPAC NOTE: Poor Americans that need help will no longer be pushed aside by illegal aliens at this hospital. How many Americans have died because they could not get the access to healthcare they needed because of all of the illegal aliens that were taking those resources?
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Illegal residents turned away in Tarrant
Hospital district does what UTMB is considering
The idea of turning away sick illegal immigrants who go to the
University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston for cancer treatment
may be controversial, but the policy already is in place in at least
one hospital district in Texas.
JPS Health Network in Fort Worth, Tarrant County's hospital
district, has for several years told patients who live in the country
illegally to find non-emergency care elsewhere. That rule also applies
to U.S. citizens who live outside Tarrant County.
Galveston's hospital district may soon join those ranks when it
comes to cancer care because it is unable to meet demand with limited
state funds. The medical school's Cancer Patients Acceptance Committee
has for months considered restricting the district's $12 million annual
budget for indigent cancer patients to people who can prove they're in
the country legally. A decision is expected to be made by January.
Harris County health officials say if the new policy goes into
place the Harris County Hospital District, which does not use legal
status as criteria for patient selection, likely will have to pick up
the slack.
In Fort Worth, patients who don't have insurance or qualify for
Medicaid and aren't legal residents are referred to the federally
qualified health center there, said Robert Earley, senior vice
president of JPS Health Network. "It's such a politically charged
issue," Earley said. "As a public hospital, people are going to say you
need to be certain that you're there for every single person. But yet
funded by tax dollars, you run into a political issue from a base of
people that are paying that say, 'Wait a second, I don't want my money
used in that way.' "
Topics: limited health care dollars, illegal immigration, TX, Texas, Fort Worth, patients, cancer treatments, poor Americans, rising costs, taxes, health, safety
12/3/2007
By ALEXIS GRANT
The Houston Chronicle
Opponents of the policy point out that people who pay rent in the city
contribute to the tax base because their landlord pays taxes, he said.
The hospital still provides emergency care to anyone who comes
through its doors — as required by law — and their urgent care,
prenatal care and school-based clinics also are available to everyone.
The district hired a consulting company earlier this year to figure
out how much money they'd spend if they didn't follow that policy.
Phase 2 Consulting, which is based in Austin, estimated about 107,000
illegal immigrants live in Tarrant County, and about a quarter of those
would look to JPS Health Network's charity program for preventive care
if that was allowed. Treating those patients would cost about $41
million a year, the group estimated.
$100 million cost
Harris County spends about $100 million annually on the care of
illegal immigrants, including emergency care and childbirth, said David
Lopez, president and CEO of the Harris County Hospital District.
To qualify for non-emergency care at Harris County's two hospitals, Ben
Taub General and Lyndon B. Johnson General, patients who don't have
insurance must show proof of income and prove they live in the county.
They do not need to prove they're living here legally.
"If you start asking about citizenship, there are some individuals
who have to be seen who may defer being seen by a physician because
they're afraid of being deported," Lopez said.
He told the story of a young woman who visited one of the county's
hospitals about a year ago and admitted she was in the U.S. illegally.
The staff diagnosed her with typhus, a contagious disease that could
have spread to others had she not been treated, Lopez said.
Conflicting opinions
The issue of whether to use taxpayer money to provide preventive
health care to illegal immigrants has long been debated in Texas. In
2001, then-Attorney General John Cornyn issued a legal opinion that
said federal law prohibited public hospitals from using tax dollars to
provide non-emergency care to people lacking legal status.
But Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a very different legal opinion
in 2004. It said hospitals can make their own decision about whether to
use state funds for that purpose, which is why policies today differ by
hospital district.
Some health officials say covering preventive care for people who
can't afford it makes fiscal sense because it cuts down on emergency
room visits, which often are more costly. And while hospitals have the
choice to treat patients in non-emergencies, they are obligated to
treat anyone who shows up in the emergency room.
Need for reform
"There's an element here where you could say in the short run (that
cutting preventive services) might save some money, but in the long run
I'm not sure that it would," said Steven Wallace, associate director of
UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research.
Many emphasized that this is just one problem in a system most agree needs reform.
"This kind of goes hand-in-hand with the larger problem of the
increased number of uninsured Americans and the strain that causes on
the indigent care system," said Daniel Montez, chief executive of the
Denver Harbor Clinic, a community health clinic in Houston that serves
the uninsured.
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