Thread: MN - At Clinic, Tales and Health Concerns of Hispanics

MINNEAPOLIS — As in many public hospitals across the country, the largest number of foreign-born patients at Hennepin County Medical Center are Hispanic immigrants. They are in the emergency room, the maternity ward, neighborhood clinics and in a part-time clinic in the main hospital set aside for Spanish-language patients.

The clinic, open three half-days a week, is so busy that it is hard to get an appointment. Dr. Carmen Divertie, an internist from Peru, founded it 15 years ago, modeling it after a clinic for Russians at the hospital.

Many of Dr. Divertie’s patients are recent immigrants from Mexico or Ecuador, and she assumes that virtually all are illegal, though she does not ask. The hospital has a policy of not considering immigration status in offering care, but the money spent on illegal immigrants accounts for a sizable part of the hospital’s unreimbursed tab of $45 million a year — a sore point for people upset about illegal immigration, even in this city with a long history of reaching out to immigrants.

Dr. Michael Belzer, the medical director at Hennepin, said wryly, “We’ve cornered the market on the uninsured.â€

One woman who arrived at the clinic last summer for a checkup said she had recently paid a coyote, or human smuggler, $3,000 to cross the heavily guarded border into Arizona. The crossing took just two hours.

Yet, the citizens and taxpayers are forced to pay for free healthcare, non-emergency yet since a "check-up" is not emergency healthcare, but these parasites have $3000 to pay a coyote.

And the article is written sympathetically. What is wrong with these people?

MINNEAPOLIS — As in many public hospitals across the country, the largest number of foreign-born patients at Hennepin County Medical Center are Hispanic immigrants. They are in the emergency room, the maternity ward, neighborhood clinics and in a part-time clinic in the main hospital set aside for Spanish-language patients.

Looks like the invasion is alive and well in Minnesota as well! Is there any state in this union that is not being invaded by illegals???

The chatter in the hallways and waiting rooms indicates that Minneapolis — a full 1,150 miles from the Mexican border — is less a destination of convenience than necessity for illegal immigrants. Some went first to California, Chicago or New York, and then came here to get their children away from gangs or find affordable housing, jobs, good schools and health care.

Health care they will not pay a dime for! And I wonder how the gang situation is now in Minnesota?