Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens?

Question

This has been around for a bit, but I thought is was worth sharing and debating:

Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:

1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963
2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after
3. Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later by coincidence

On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day -- every day)

A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants.' Crikey, that's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas. According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.

The average patient in Parkland's maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay. OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do.

Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE. The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child -- her previous two were also born at Parkland. Her first two deliveries were free and the Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost $200 to have them in Mexico. This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away. (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.)

How long has this been going on? What are the long-term effects? Well, another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the U.S. Illegally -- now she is having her own child there as well. (That's right, she's technically a U.S. Citizen.) These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, diapers and formula.

Most of these things are available to American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable.

Because these women are illegal immigrants they do not have to provide any sort of legitimate identification -- no proof of income. An American citizen would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income -- an illegal immigrant need only claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word.

My husband is a pilot for the United States Navy (yes, he fought in Iraq) and while the health care is good, we Navy wives don't get any of these perks! Car seats? Diapers? Not so much. So my question is this: Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens? Yes it does!

As I mentioned, the care I have received is perfectly adequate but it's bare bones, meat and potato medical care -- not top of line.

Their (the illegals) medical care is free -- simply because they are illegal immigrants? Once again, there is no way to verify their income. Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County earn less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the 'free' care is not so easy for Americans.)

There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free treatment because they resided outside of Dallas County. So the hospital is going to sue them! Illegals get it all free! But U.S. citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this?

As if that isn't annoying enough, the illegal immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a great injustice to her.

In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/parkland.asp

Answer 1

Thanks for writing this well researched article. I have been saying this for quite a while now. The amount of money our government spends on medicaid is astronomical. In 1995, total state and fed medicaid spending was approx $156B, in 2004 $309B. In 2004 fed spending alone was $176B. Adults between the age of 21 and 64 without children receive no medicaid benefits at all.

Here is a nice quote

"As noted above, in a recent year in Colorado, the state's emergency Medicaid program paid an estimated $30 million in hospital and physician delivery costs for about 6,000 illegal immigrant mothers - average of $5,000 per baby."

The solution is easy, go after the employers, without jobs, illegals immigration will decline. Force illegals applying for medicaid to reveal their sources of income, then go after the employers.

Go to "numbersUSA" if you want to get active, and work to bring immigration back under control.

Answer 2

Everyone gets the same medical care. The cost is completely different as outlined. The little tid bit I can add is that here in Washington state they get free dental. So basically when the patient is pregnant the providers try to run them all thru the dentist to get that done as well.
Bankruptcy because of medical bills according to some is 50% of total bankruptcies filed:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0202-08.htm

Answer 3

Why not? Our congressmen all treat them better than us! They HATE us unless we are capitalisticly preditorial and full of selfish GREED and hate god and are queer and dont own guns otherwise THEY HATE US! All congressmen burn in hell. I want to see them burn! I would torchure them if I could for how they have done us all!!

Answer 4

Yes.
I mean Access pays almost 100% for the low lifes and Illegal Aliens' RXs while I have to shell out $128 for my needed RXs.
Anyone else ever notice that "Projects" -Public Housing usually gets new upgrades like every 5 years or less at the cost to the Legal US Taxpayer.

Answer 5

This is shameful.
My husband has always paid for health insurance for the family but with every child I have we stilll had to shell out about 400 for the 10% that my insurance didn't cover....and that with the pressure of insurance company wanting you to get out of the hospital in 24 hrs.
But yet those that pay nothing can lay around in the lap of luxury on the tax payer.

Answer 6

What a crock! Illegals are nothing but a drain on society and shouldn't get anything but a sign that is stapled to their back side saying don't let the door hit you in the a** on the way out.

Answer 7

One way to deal with the problem is to get Congress off their butts and tell them to pass the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007 (HR 1940) Has 57 Co-Sponsors, Bug Your Congressman To Sign On http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002384.html by Digger

Illegals and legal immigrants come to this country to have their anchor babies so that it is harder to kick out the parents when ICE finds them, and so that they can feed off the govt teat and get social benefits through their child. We should stop giving citizenship to the children of illegal aliens and to legal aliens who come here just to give birth to a US citizen.

We cannot be the health care provider for all the poor in the world. The paramount problem of all govts is how to distribute limited resources. We must use our resources to rebuild our infrastructure and provide health care to US citizens.

Answer 8

Aliens

Answer 9

The illegals get free health care. We don't.

Taxpayers not only pay for the illegals' health care, we pay for our own. This doesn't seem fair! I'm tired of having to to pay taxes for the illegals when citizens get fewer services!

The 20 to 30 million illegals shouldn't be here and they are destroying our economy!

Answer 10

The solution is obvious! Craft a universal health care coverage plan so that everyone can get the care they need through mandatory private plans and/or government payer plan. That way, no fine upstanding American ever has to feel that he or she gets treatment that is inferior to that provided to immigrants and aliens.

Suthrn, ya KNEW I was gonna go there! :-)