Thread: CLINIC IN ATL CLOSES DUE TO ILLEGALS SKIPPING OUT ON BILLS

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/healt ... grady.html

Dialysis Unit Closing Hits Illegal Immigrants Hard

LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink
By KEVIN SACK
Published: November 20, 2009
ATLANTA — Each had crossed the border years before, smuggled across the desert by a coyote, never imagining the journey would lead to a drab and dusty clinic on the ninth floor of Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital.

David Walter Banks for The New York Times
Fidelia Perez in a hospital room after receiving emergency dialysis on Oct. 13.

David Walter Banks for The New York Times
Bertha A. Montelongo, a longtime diabetic who has lost her vision, says returning to Mexico is not an option.
Some knew before the crossing that they had diabetes or lupus or high blood pressure, but it was only after they arrived that their kidneys began to fail. To survive, they needed dialysis at a cost of about $50,000 a year, which their sporadic work as housekeepers, painters and laborers could not begin to cover.

And so they turned to Grady, a taxpayer-supported safety-net hospital that would provide dialysis to anyone in need, even illegal immigrants with no insurance or ability to pay. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning, the 15 or so patients would settle into their recliners, four to a room, and while away the monotonous three-hour treatments by chitchatting in Spanish.

That all changed on Oct. 4, when the cash-strapped public hospital closed its outpatient dialysis clinic, leaving 51 patients — almost all illegal immigrants — in a life-or-death limbo.

For Grady, which has served Atlanta’s poor for 117 years, it was an excruciating choice, a stark reflection of what happens when the country’s inadequate health care system confronts its defective immigration policy.

Like other hospitals, particularly public hospitals, Grady has been left to provide costly treatments to nonpaying illegal residents who most likely could not have obtained such care in their home countries. American taxpayers and health care consumers have borne the expense.

Over time, the mounting losses have compromised Grady’s charitable mission, forcing layoffs, increases in fees and the elimination of services.

“Years and years of providing this free care has led Grady to the breaking point,â€

The hospital’s agreement with MexCare, obtained through a state open records request, calls for Grady to pay $18,000 for every patient relocated — $6,750 in travel expenses and escort fees, a $750 administrative fee, and payment for 30 dialysis treatments at $350 each.

This sounds like blackmail.
And if the Mexican government does not care for their citizens, why is it up to us?

While tragic, why is it that the United States must provide the funds, and not the nation of Mexico or wherever these citizens came from? Mexico wants illegal aliens to think Mexico first (send those billions), and Mexico obviously thinks citizens last, corrupt government and remittances first.

And to know that almost all of the patients were illegal. So sad for Atlanta, and for those who need the treatment. Another hospital who is broke from illegal immigration.

Psalm 139:14

Mexico, step up to the plate and start offering these dialysis services to your OWN CITIZENS NOW!!!!!!!!

What's terrible is how the Mexican nation is just as weathly in gold ore and oil as any develoed country, and it is through the cartel type corruption, that it is stifled into destitution.

These treatments would probable be priced in Mexico at a fraction of the US price. In fact according to this table Mexico is one of the cheapest places in the world to receive renal replacement therapy:

/viewimage.asp?img=SaudiJKidneyDisTranspl_2009_20_2 _307_45588_b2.jpg

I guess this link will not perform. Annual costs were (US dollars): 9,631 in Mexico but 46,000 in the US.
Canada, Australia and France were all over $76,000 !!

So, when we treat sick Mexicans we are losing in a big way!

So we have to pay for their return transportation, first class no doubt, plus an escort and 30 dialysis treatments to be done in Mexico on their own citizens!! This is nuts. I have never seen such gall. It would be cheaper to pay that coyote $1,500 to return these illegals.

Unemployment rate in Mexico is under 5%.