This is kinda long but is interesting if you are a healthcare worker in NC (applies to other states too I'm sure).

Over The River
Treating the flood of uninsured illegal immigrants threatens to erode the quality of care hospitals can afford to provide.
by Edward Martin

In good days, her dark eyes sparkled, but those days grew rare. The walls of her heart were becoming rigid from restrictive cardiomyopathy, and Jesica Santillan seemed to become even tinier inside her print hospital gown. Spirits leaped when a donor was found and a Duke University Hospital surgeon opened her chest and replaced her heart and lungs. Joy turned to despair when the accidentally mismatched organs failed, and despite a second transplant a week later, she died. Santillan, who turned 17 while awaiting her first transplant, ignited a firestorm over hospital safety and costs. Her bill: nearly $900,000.

Duke University Hospital wrote it off, settled a lawsuit by the family and began rebuilding its reputation. But other circumstances surrounding the girl’s death, less noted at the time, are becoming one of the most volatile issues in health care.

Her mother and stepfather had paid a smuggler $5,000 to bring them and their three children from Mexico to the U.S. They settled in Franklin County, near Raleigh, where jobs were plentiful and employers wouldn’t delve too deeply into immigration status. Her mother became a housekeeper at Louisburg College, and her stepfather was a construction worker.

As many as 600,000 illegal immigrants live in North Carolina, by some estimates a third more than when Jesica died in 2003. Thousands pour into Tar Heel hospitals each year, straining budgets stretched by skimpy Medicare and Medicaid payments and managed-care discounts. No hospitals are immune, not even the best in the state, as ranked for Business North Carolina by Lakewood, Colo.-based Health Grades Inc.

Solutions are scarce, emotions high.

“In most circles, it’s politically difficult to say, ‘Let’s provide health care for illegal or undocumented immigrants,’â€