Thread: IA's Face Fewer Choices for Health Care on Treasure Coast

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Illegal immigrants face fewer choices for health care on Treasure Coast

TCPalm.com

7:15 AM EDT, October 13, 2008

Health options for illegal immigrants on the Treasure Coast exist, though they aren't free or plentiful.

Volunteers In Medicine, which provides free care for impoverished, uninsured Martin County residents, closed its doors to illegal immigrants last month. Immigrant advocates in Indiantown, including Sister Teresa Auad, aren't sure how many undocumented families were using the clinic's free services, but said a need for primary care definitely exists in the area.

"No. 1, this means don't get sick," Auad said. "It means, they have to have money to go to the doctor. And finally, if they have an emergency, they'll go to the hospital and possibly be handed over to Immigration (and Naturalization Services). Suddenly, we've become a very unwelcoming country."

Treasure Coast Community Health in Fellsmere also requires patients to prove legal residency before receiving care, Executive Director Don Loftus said. The center does direct undocumented patients to other agencies where their legal residency status might not matter.

The county Health Department is a good starting point.

County health departments provide care -- albeit, not free care -- to all residents, and even administer some programs aimed at illegal immigrants. Florida offers a limited Medicaid program, for example, for undocumented pregnant women to start prenatal care, said Lisa Olds, executive director of the Healthy Start Coalition of Martin County.

"Our mandate now is to serve all women," Olds said. "Now, Martin Memorial is a partner of ours. At some point, they may call our organization and say, 'Look, we provide in-kind services to your program to the tune of X dollars and it's going to have be cut to this,' and then we'll have allocate our dollars this way.

"We have to determine who is our highest risk," Olds added. "Who is our most unhealthy? We have to use our dollar the best way to really help a person become healthy, independent and contributing."

Volunteers In Medicine serves about 1,000 patients a year, including 100 illegal immigrants last year, with a $550,000 budget and a volunteer staff of doctors. It does this because Martin Memorial pays for all the clinical tests -- $2.3 million last year -- so when Martin Memorial needs to cut its budget, so does Volunteers In Medicine.

Clinic officials decided to focus care on legal residents.

But other agencies aren't checking documented status.

"We don't even track it," said Molly Ferguson, spokeswoman for Florida Community Health Centers. "Not to be flippant, but we don't care. It's not an issue for us."

Florida Community Health Centers, which has clinics in Indiantown, Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, charges patients a sliding fee starting at $20 based on their income. Across the state, the company served 40,000 patients last year and has a $20 million budget that comes, in part, from federal and private grants.

Illegal immigrants are welcome at the company's Indiantown clinic.

"We say bring them on," Ferguson said. "We're strapped like everybody else right now in this economy, but if there's a funder, we'll go out there and try to make sure they know what we're doing. If we can find the money, we'll expand services."

Copyright © 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... 9350.story

I lived in Florida and saw no hope of health care.......as a citizen.

This is the way the entire medical system should operate!!!

Suddenly, we've become a very unwelcoming country."

Well, Sister, all I can say is that these people have a lot of patriotism and common sense. We can only do so much for the millions of illegals here, while Americans go without and are expected to support services for invaders that have no rights in this country.