Health Forum - Yet more MD's admit: illegal aliens are killing USA's health care system

Author

Yet more MD's admit: illegal aliens are killing USA's health care system

WakeUp2005@adelphia.net

2005-12-30, 12:50 am

[Note: if you haven't done so already, please see "Illegal Aliens &
EMTALA" by Dr. Madeleine Cosman, PhD, ESQ @
http://www.rense.com/general63/emta.htm and many other websites --
then resolve to get it into the hands/email inbox of everyone you
know! -- WakeUp]
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High Cost of Medical Care for Illegal Immigrants

Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., & Robert J. Cihak, M.D.
Dec. 27, 2005

We don't want to be thought of as Scrooges post-Christmas –
particularly with the dashing approach of New Year 2006 – but we did
want to make some comments regarding the consequences of illegal
immigration on medicine and health care. This has certainly been one
of the most important and far-reaching issues of 2005. We have
received many letters from readers asking us to "Please say something"
on this emotional and fractional issue.

An old axiom states that what happens in California is a precursor
to what happens in the rest of the nation. Unfortunately, this is
true. So look for these issues to be coming to a capital in your state
soon -- if they haven't arrived already.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2000 the
population of California had the highest percent of illegal immigrants
in the country. The estimate by the Immigration and Naturalization
Service was that 2,209,000 aliens resided illegally in the state,
which was 31.6 percent of the estimated national total. Current 2005
illegal estimates vary between 14 million and 22 million nationwide.

A study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated
that in 2004 the annual uncompensated cost of medical care for illegal
immigrants in California was $1.4 billion. Total uncompensated
educational, health care and incarceration costs were estimated to be
10.5 billion.

Care is frequently provided to illegal immigrants by emergency rooms
and is provided when a crisis exists rather than as preventive
practice. Both phenomena add to the high cost of health care.

For 12 states, the government pays hospitals for providing emergency
services to illegal aliens. In 2005, the state of California got $70
million to help with dismal shortfalls. California's San Diego County
was about $100 million in the red and Los Angeles County about $140
million.

Many California hospitals cannot afford to absorb costs and many are
forced to close due to financial mandates for treating illegal
immigrants. As recently reported, 84 California hospitals are closing
their doors forever. Hospital closure degrades health care to all in
the community and results in job losses.

Federal laws provide states incentives to provide Medicaid coverage
to illegal immigrants. All state Medicaid programs offer an endless
list of services, with some states, such as Florida, literally
including the kitchen sink if home repairs and maintenance are needed.
Only four states check for citizenship before awarding Medicaid.
California escalated -- in one year -- from 450,000 illegal aliens on
Medi-Cal (California's version of Medicaid) in 2002 to 750,000 in
2003.

Medi-Cal covers well-baby maternity care, delivery expenses and
long-term care that are incurred for children born to illegal
immigrants. Thus "anchor babies" become medical insurance policies.

Noted medical lawyer Madeleine Cosman, J.D., Ph.D., wrote in her
online journal on August 27, 2005, "Promoters of open borders and
elevating the status of Illegal Aliens brilliantly use Americans'
medical compassion against ourselves." The medical literature reports
that many undocumented immigrants sequester within their bodies
infectious and fatal diseases that long ago were fought and eliminated
by American medicine Now illegals may carry drug-resistant strains of
tuberculosis, malaria, polio, leprosy, plague, dengue fever and Chagas
disease.

Are there Potential Solutions?

A number of potential solutions to reducing uncompensated health
care costs require federal participation, which means that senators
and congressmen from California and elsewhere must introduce federal
legislation while state legislators and administrators do what is
within their power to improve state laws and regulations.

Some potential solutions include:

Adopt measures to systematically collect information on undocumented
alien use of taxpayer-funded services. Health care providers and civil
libertarians have blocked past attempts to collect such information.

Withhold foreign aid to the country of origin in the amount spent
providing uncompensated medical care and refund these moneys to
providers that granted services.

Require graduates of U.S. medical schools who are citizens of
foreign countries to spend community service time treating illegal
immigrant patients in the U.S. as contribution in kind to defray
expenses billable to that country of origin.

Provide transportation to cities in country of origin where that
country is able to provide medical care.

Let's resolve, this New Year 2006, to promote a respectful exchange
of ideas and opinions aimed at achieving a sane, safe and sensible
solution to the immigration and medicine dilemma. With this goal our
citizens, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants and those who desire to
come to America and play by the rules will have a better quality of
life.

It is far easier to make progress within a win-win, rather than a
win-lose or lose-lose overture.

Such said, An uplifting New Year to you all!

Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a Senior Fellow and Board Member of the
Discovery Institute and a past president of the Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons. Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., is a
Visiting Fellow in Economics and Citizenship at the International
Trade education Foundation of the Washington International Trade
Council. He comments regularly on medical-legal-ethical issues.

************************************************************************
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"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation . . . betrays [one nation] into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter . . .
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
"Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded."

-- President George Washington
Farewell Address

Robert Morien

2005-12-30, 10:49 am

In article <rg99r15haqudi5rsh774spmuck3177qfoa@4ax.com>,
WakeUp2005@adelphia.net wrote:

> Such said, An uplifting New Year to you all!

what was the name of that hospital that had 10,000 births from illegals
in one year?

If you use a five or six line sig and post lots of one-line messages, you
may find your messages are getting cancelled by the Anti-Spam Robots
that monitor the newsgroups.

The Anti-Spam Robots do not have any hard and fast rules about
Signatures (sigs), other than Usenet nettiquette. Up to 4 lines is
considered polite, over 6 is getting excessive. However, the robots
cannot tell if your short sentence is important or not. What they will
see is you are repeating yourself 80% of the time. By definition, that
makes it spam.

Typically, it is considered bad manners to put more than four lines of
information in your Signature, regardless of what those four lines might
say or contain. Gigantic ASCII pictures of dragons, for example, are
annoying when you have to see them every time a person posts. It is
considered very bad manners to put an advertisement in your "sig" and
then post a lot of empty or nearly-empty messages simply to get your ad
into various newsgroups.

Advertising with "sigs" is a time-honored way to do things. It is the
recommended way - as long as you are *participating* in the discussion,
and not just posting to get the "sig" seen. In fact, it's probably the
ONLY nettiquette friendly way on the discussion newsgroups to advertise.

A Signature (sig) file is a small file that is automatically appended to
(stuck at the end of) any newsgroup messages you post -- regardless of
the content. Whether or not you can create and use a "sig" depends on
what sort of Mail Reader you're using.

Some suggestions:

Keep your sig at four lines or less. The Anti-Spam Robots don't care
what it says but folks reading your messages do.

Do not use an automated sig process you cannot edit before sending
your messages. If your News Reader hides it from you, turn the
option off and use the "Import Text" option or a macro key so you
can truncate it for short messages.

Keep Signature advertising extremely short and sweet. Let your
Web page contain the sales pitch. Your sig should usually be little
more than your URL and perhaps what sort of business you're in.

If you've only got a few words to say, make it a habit to shorten
your sig.

Restraint and responsibility are everything. If you've got those, people
will listen to you."