Thread: One More Immigrant Health Care Sob Story

Without federal help, young immigrants in the US fight for health care

NOTE: ALJAZEERA MEDDLING
http://america.aljazeera.com/article...e.html?ref=yfp
Under the current law, thousands of immigrants with temporary legal status are ineligible for affordable health care.

October 5, 2015 5:00AM ET
by Rachel Glickhouse @riogringa


CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — It was a mother’s worst nightmare. Maria Lopez, a single mother of three, answered her door one August afternoon to find employees from her eldest daughter’s school.
“They told me, ‘Prepare yourself. They’re taking Brenda to the hospital,’” Lopez said.
Brenda Zamorano, then 17, had been found unconscious in the bathroom at school.
Lopez later discovered that her daughter had suffered a brain hemorrhage after an arteriovenous malformation ruptured. Less than 1 percent of the population is born with this condition, and ruptures most often occur in people ages 15 to 20.
“I started to pray and pray and pray,” said Lopez, a devout evangelical Christian. “It’s purely God’s mercy that Brenda is alive.”
But the brain injury left her daughter paralyzed and unable to speak.
Zamorano recently turned 19. The once vibrant and healthy teen, who dreamed of becoming a stylist, now spends most of her days in a wheelchair in a bedroom she shares with her mother and her sisters, ages 5 and 10. Zamorano will need 24-hour-a-day care for the rest of her life; she can’t breathe or eat on her own, using tubes in her throat and stomach and relying on diapers.
This has been devastating for her and her family, which has had to pay out of pocket for treatment. She lacks health insurance because of a federal rule that makes it virtually impossible for her and tens of thousands of other young immigrants to get affordable coverage.


Maria Lopez cleans Brenda's airway as her daughters Vanessa and Ariana play nearby.Eliseu Cavalcante

Lopez can’t work, since she must care for her daughter full time. She applied for and received emergency Medicaid to cover nearly $100,000 in medical costs, but her daughter’s ongoing treatment relies on a hodgepodge of support and donations. She received diapers and food contributions from her church, as well as a few hundred dollars from local fundraisers. A general practitioner agreed to see Zamorano at a reduced rate and donated a year’s worth of medication. Lopez has avoided taking her daughter to other doctors, though, out of fear that she won’t be able to pay. She regularly receives bills that run over $1,000 for equipment rental.
Zamorano arrived in to the U.S. from Mexico at age 6 with her parents and lived most of her life as an undocumented immigrant. But with the help of a lawyer, in 2014 she won temporary status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Announced in June 2012, DACA allows undocumented immigrants who were born after July 15, 1981, and arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday to apply for temporary legal status without fear of deportation. It permits recipients to get a Social Security number, meaning they may get a job and a driver’s license, open a bank account and access credit and college financial aid. The status must be renewed every two years and does not lead to legal permanent residency. Since the initiative began, more than 680,000 immigrants across the country have been given legal status through DACA.
But shortly after President Barack Obama launched the program, the federal government quietly implemented a rule barring DACA recipients from obtaining federally funded free or low-cost health plans or insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Though the government regards DACA recipients as having temporary legal status, many affordable health insurance providers are obligated to treat them as undocumented and deny them coverage.
Health care experts at the National Immigration Law Center said the decision was political and arbitrary. “The timing was in 2012, shortly before presidential elections,” said Jenny Rejeske, a center health policy analyst. “I think it was done to try to head off criticism.” She added that because DACA recipients are young adults — the same group the administration heavily targeted when promoting health plans — the regulations made little sense. “This is the population you want to buy health insurance,” she said.

This seems like an opportunity for the churches providing housing services for refugees for pay and profit from the gov't to invest some of the profit into the humanity that they encourage to arrive illegally.

Young "immgirants" need to depart our nation with their parents. It's time to shut up, pack your bags, and get the hell out of here. We're sick of you stealing our jobs, our college seats, our hospital beds, our welfare benefits, our tax credit revenue, our food stamps, and so much more.

“This is the population you want to buy health insurance,” she said.

No, this is the population we want to leave our country.