Thread: Illegal Farm Workers Get Health Care

May 10, 2008
Illegal Farm Workers Get Health Care in Shadows
By KEVIN SACK
MADERA, Calif. — The curandera is weary from work. Three, four, five times a day, the immigrant farm workers knock on her apartment door, begging her to cure their ailments.

They complain of indigestion, of rashes, of post-traumatic panic attacks. Then there are the house calls that compel her to crate up her potions and herbs and drive across town, often after midnight, to escape the notice of immigration police.

“I’ve done so many cures that I’m exhausted; it gives me no time to rest,â€

As long as the American Tax payer is not being billed for this I am 100% for it.

Can we refer patients there from our overcrowded ERs?

Ya well there's a whole lot of people here who rely on alternative medicines and vitamins and herbal remedies because they can't afford medical care either. They have diabetes, broken bones, cancer, and a whole host of ailments too. Except our government wants to try and control that as well so there's nothing left to work with. Many elderly can't afford their meds and either don't take them at all or take the minimum and hang on to things just in case it gets even worse.

Except even our alternative medicine people have to have some sort of certification or license in many states to do it for money. Otherwise you are practicing medicine without a license....risking the interaction with regular medicine which may end up causing other problems if the Dr. doesn't know. Then now the lovely news that many of the ingredients are from China and who knows when people might be dying from tainted vitamin C tablets?


And she can retire now at 55? Or wanted to? Hello!!!!

Then even here they admit there is the risk of communicable disease and they are working with our food?

Even WITH legal status we are faced with "fradulant harm".

Our barriers include money, inability to get into a Dr. long wait lines, having no insurance or even having it and having them refuse payment, loosing everything you own, putting your family in debt for a lifetime, being sent home to die, loosing custody of your children or being charged with neglect or abuse if you don't try and have them treated, and language as well. (Practically all the Dr's here are foreign and even though they try and speak English....it's not a real communication like we used to be able to have. You often wonder if they really understood you or if you understood them. And we didn't leave the country and refuse to learn the language...we're home. I'm lucky...I atleast have an American English speaking Nurse Practitioner. I find some of the "cultural" differences hard as well since many never listen to you and don't appear to take the detailed info in their files like I was taught to do. I worked for one....and supposidly he was one of the best.....I was the basic translator between him and the patients because they couldn't understand him and would pour it all out to me because he never wanted to listen and waited for me to make sure they understood him. His wife was a pediatrician and turned women over to HRS because of mosquitoe bites....took a long time and alot of court dates to finally get it through to her that 7 mosquite bites or a bunch of sand fleas or even fire ant bites in Florida isn't neglect. It goes with living there. She almost lost her practice because of that. Not from her concern but fear from women to take their children to her....

Many people in our society have a hard time having someone of the opposite sex do certain exams or care for us in personal ways so it even stretches us as well. I worked in a nursing home and most of the CNA's were women. Men didn't seem to mind that. But when we got a black male as one....well the ladies didn't want him bathing them. He was big and built and a scarey figure at first to a frail elderly person. Fortunatly he had the personality of a saint and was their favorite bath time buddy after awhile. But it takes adjustment all the time and some can't....so it's not anything many people in this country don't also experience. We're a nation of immigrants after all and we are forced to adapt and we never even left.