http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_5188571

Perry has plan for migrants' health insurance (7:44 p.m.)
By Brandi Grissom / El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Article Launched:02/08/2007 07:28:41 PM MST

AUSTIN -- Gov. Rick Perry said today that border health care officials and community leaders could help in the creation of a federal plan that would pay for undocumented immigrants' health care with Mexican dollars.
In a meeting with El Paso community leaders, Perry said he had discussions with Mike Leavitt, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, about working with the Mexican government to establish a debit card system that Mexican citizens could use to pay for services at federally qualified health centers.

He told El Paso Mayor John Cook and Texas Tech University officials they could play an "extraordinary role" in making that plan a reality.

"It's creating a way for Mexico to participate in people who are living in the United States," Perry said.

Mary Kahn, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington D.C., said the discussion between Perry and Leavitt was an informal exchange of ideas.

"This debit card idea, it certainly would require Congressional action; there is no bill pending at this time," she said. "It was basically a brainstorming session about how to handle issue of healthcare for undocumented workers."

Perry has long griped of federal inattention to the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration policy.

In his "airing of grievances" against Washington during the State of the State address this week, Perry said it was about time Congress took action to help Texas bear the cost of undocumented immigrants.

"Our hospitals, schools and law enforcement agencies deserve more than praise, they deserve the appropriate level of federal reimbursement," he said in the speech.

Perry spokesman Ted Royer said the governor thought the idea would interest the doctors from Texas Tech who live on the border.

"This would be step towards Texas not being shortchanged so much," Royer said.

Dr. Jose Manuel De La Rosa, a vice dean at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, who was in the meeting with Perry, said the idea of Mexican-paid debit cards could provide more health care access in cities like El Paso.

With about one-third of El Pasoans uninsured, the city has the second-highest rate of uninsured residents in the state, according to an April 2005 study by the Texas Comptroller.

"It's a source of health care for people who don't have care," De La Rosa said.

Margaret Althoff-Olivas, spokeswoman for Thomason Hospital, said until May 2005 hospital staff could not ask about patients' legal status, so officials had no statistics about how many undocumented immigrants they treated.

Under a new federal reimbursement program meant to help hospitals pay some of the cost for undocumented immigrants, staff can ask whether patients have certain documents, she said.

The federal government reimburses the hospital for a portion of the cost of emergency care to undocumented patients, she said.

The paperwork for that program shows that between 6 and 8 percent of Thomason's emergency patients were undocumented immigrants, Althoff-Olivas said.

Thomason has received about $5 million in the last 20 months of the program, she said.

Mayor Cook said the governors of Chihuahua and New Mexico had discussed similar U.S.-Mexico cost-sharing concepts. He said the idea could save local taxpayers money.

"That would be a really big relief for a community like El Paso," he said.