Thread: Health services to illegal immigrants

THE MEXICAN CONSULATE HELPS FIND HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGALS AT OUR EXPENSE
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... -me-health
31may31,1,2804618.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Mexican consulates offer healthcare help- Los Angeles Times
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Anna Gorman,
Times Staff Writers
May 31, 2007


First came the Mexican consular photo identification cards that closely resembled U.S. driver's licenses and allowed immigrants, including those in the country illegally, to establish credit and apply for government services.

Then the Mexican government worked with the Treasury Department to make sure the U.S. banking system remained open to immigrants.Now Mexican consulates in the U.S. are taking on an even more formidable challenge: the healthcare system.

A program called Ventanillas de Salud, or Health Windows, aims to provide Mexican immigrants with basic health information, cholesterol checks and other preventive tests. It also makes referrals to U.S. hospitals, health centers and government programs where patients can get care without fear of being turned over to immigration authorities.

"Being undocumented, we thought we didn't have the right to certain things," said Rosalba Hernandez, 26, who came to the U.S. two years ago and lives in Panorama City. "We were scared to ask for information."

Hernandez, a housecleaner, and her boyfriend, a gardener, said they rarely go to the doctor because of treatment costs and fear of deportation. But after a visit to the Mexican Consulate last week to get her consular ID card, Hernandez now knows she can get affordable insurance and free access to some government health services.

Launched in 2003 in Los Angeles and San Diego, the Ventanillas program is currently operating in 11 cities, including Chicago and Houston, and the goal is to have a version in all 47 Mexican consulates around the country.

"Health-related issues are a very important absent piece of information," said Ruben Beltran, Mexican consul general in Los Angeles. "We're filling the blanks…. The consulate is the prime location to disseminate that information to the Mexican community."

But critics say that illegal immigrants are already an unchecked drain on the public healthcare system and that such programs will only allow them to reap even more benefits.

"It facilitates people remaining in the country illegally," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Clearly it is a policy of the Mexican government … to get all the institutions in the U.S. to provide services to their citizens who are living here illegally."

Mehlman said Los Angeles County, especially, should not be partnering with the consulate to provide health services. "The county is broke, they are cutting back on services, they are closing emergency rooms, yet they are dreaming up new ways to provide benefits to illegal aliens," he said. "It's lunacy."

Health services to illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County cost the Medi-Cal program nearly $440 million in 2005, according to the California Department of Health Services. Statewide, that number was more than $1.1 billion last year.

Nevertheless, some recent research indicates that many illegal immigrants don't regularly use the public healthcare system. A Rand Corp. study published last year found that adult immigrants in general, and the undocumented in particular, consume fewer healthcare resources per person than the native-born. In part that's because immigrants are younger and healthier, and because they are less likely to have health insurance, the study found.

Illegal immigrants are not eligible to enroll in major government health insurance programs such as Medicare, Medicaid (known in California as Medi-Cal) and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. In recent years, eligibility rules have been tightened to exclude even some legal immigrants.

At the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles last week, Graciela Cazeres, 41, said she wanted to get medical insurance but thought all companies required her to have a green card.

A nanny in Beverly Hills, Cazeres was in a car accident with her boss and injured her knee. If her employer had not paid for the operation, Cazeres said, she doesn't know what she would have done.

Consul Beltran said the Ventanillas program saves the county money by encouraging immigrants to seek preventive care, rather than waiting until they need much more expensive emergency care. Since the inception of the program, Beltran said, more than 286,000 Mexicans in Los Angeles have received information and referrals and more than 12,000 have received services they learned about through Ventanillas.

On a recent day at the consulate, while immigrants waited to get their consular ID cards, they listened to a charla — or chat — in Spanish about clogged arteries, healthy diets, the causes of asthma and the dangers of buying Mexican prescription drugs under the table.

Socorro Alanis, a community worker from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, also explained that pregnant women and infants are entitled to immunization and nutritional benefits through the federal program Women, Infants and Children, regardless of their legal status.

"This program is free," Alanis said to the group, holding up a flier about WIC. "Many people don't use it, because they think that they aren't permitted. It's to have a healthy baby and a healthy woman."

Texas Children’s Hospital Partners with Mexican Consulate to Open Houston’s First Medical Information Center Targeted to Mexi..
http://media.texaschildrenshospital.org ... onsulate_/

NEWS RELEASES
Texas Children’s Hospital Partners with Mexican Consulate to Open Houston’s First Medical Information Center Targeted to Mexican Community


News media contact:
Elizabeth Hipp, 832-824-2108

HOUSTON (Nov. 13, 2006) –
In an effort to meet the growing health care needs of the Mexican community in Houston,Â*Texas Children’s Hospital, in collaboration withÂ*St. Luke’s Health SystemsÂ*and with philanthropic support fromÂ*Bank of America, has partnered with theÂ*Consulate General of Mexico – HoustonÂ*to create the city’s first bilingual health care information resource center.Â* Located within the Mexican Consulate, theÂ*Medical Information CenterÂ*is expected to assist more than 5,000 people each year, many of whom will be Mexican citizens living or traveling in Southeast Texas, as well as persons of dual citizenship and Americans seeking to do business or travel in Mexico.

“This collaboration is a great example of how several organizations can work together to harness the power of information,â€

As I had said in the past this free healthcare is hurting the hospitals and costing the rest of us money. I went to the emergency department at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, Florida as you see less sick illegals in the waiting room. Knowing they aren't medically screened I don't want to be near them. Memorial hospital is good as they seggregate them from the rest of us depending on what their complaint is. About a week later I recieved a questionnaire from my insurance if my problem was from a car accident or accident at work. I filled it out and sent it back immediately. Not even a week later the hospital called asking if I had replied to my health insurance questionnaire. They had never done that in the past as I had been there on numerous occassions with my daughter and had asked others who had gone there before. Yesterday I got a letter from the hospital asking me to: "Please contact your insurance carrier to expidite the processing of you claim." I couldn't believe it. They must be really deparate as my bill is only $431.00
I know that they are getting more illegals and then I learned from one of the police officers who does an off duty assignment at a clinic there that a large number of illegals bring their kids there and go for prenatal care for themselves or their teenage daughters. I don't mind helping out poor single moms or families but not illegals.

If the Mexican government is willing to do this for illegals then they should be paying the bills for the illegals and not expect American taxpayers to pick up the bills. The hospitals, towns etc should send the bill to Mexican consulant, to President Bush personnal account, to all the senators involved in the senate bill, and anyother agency who supports illegals including all the non-profit agencies that are trying to run the government and bankrupt the American people. We don't owe illegals medical care.

We should also send bills to those who hire them. An example would be Sopher, owner of the Turnberry Group and Donald Trump as their construction projects hire lots of them. Infact they bus them in from Haulover Beach.

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b]maybe what we should be doing is hounding mexico to pay for their own and stay the hell out of our constitution and country[/b]

Illegal Immigration and Public Health

The impact of immigration on our public health is often overlooked. Although millions of visitors for tourism and business come every year, the foreign population of special concern is illegal residents, who come most often from countries with endemic health problems and less developed health care. They are of greatest consequence because they are responsible for a disproportionate share of serious public health problems, are living among us for extended periods of time, and often are dependent on U.S. health care services. Public Health Risks

Because illegal immigrants, unlike those who are legally admitted for permanent residence, undergo no medical screening to assure that they are not bearing contagious diseases, the rapidly swelling population of illegal aliens in our country has also set off a resurgence of contagious diseases that had been totally or nearly eradicated by our public health system.

According to Dr. Laurence Nickey, director of the El Paso heath district “Contagious diseases that are generally considered to have been controlled in the United States are readily evident along the border ... The incidence of tuberculosis in El Paso County is twice that of the U.S. rate. Dr. Nickey also states that leprosy, which is considered by most Americans to be a disease of the Third World, is readily evident along the U.S.-Mexico border and that dysentery is several times the U.S. rate ... People have come to the border for economic opportunities, but the necessary sewage treatment facilities, public water systems, environmental enforcement, and medical care have not been made available to them, causing a severe risk to health and well being of people on both sides of the border.â€