| MND COMMENTARY |
December 5, 2005 by John David Powell President Bush’s plan to deal with illegal immigrants may not be the best idea on the table, but it increased the national discussion, and forced the mainstream media to make the issue their lead stories, if only for a few hours. Rarely mentioned by politicians, pundits, and promoters of special interests is the silent threat to our nation’s healthcare system because of lax border enforcements and liberal policies regarding medical care. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (emtala.com) requires all emergency departments to treat any person seeking help for a medical condition, which can range from a gunshot wound, to a traffic accident injury, to labor, to a splinter in a finger, to a cough. The emergency department must provide screen and treat the patient until ready for discharge, or stabilize the patient for transfer, regardless of ability to pay. Uncompensated costs to hospitals and other healthcare providers run into the billions of dollars annually. States bordering Mexico take the biggest hits. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR (fairus.org), estimates that last year, California lost $1.4 billion, Texas lost $850 million, and Arizona lost $400 million. Officials believe care to illegal immigrants make up 25 percent of those costs. If that is true, then hospitals serving the 24 US counties along the border ate $190 million in the year 2000, according to an oft-cited study by MGT of America ( mgtamer.com) sponsored by the United States/Mexico Border Counties Coalition (bordercounties.org) No one can say for sure if the 25-percent estimate is high or low, because federal laws prohibit healthcare providers from asking residency status of a patient. But, no one contests the guess. The Government Accounting Office figures lack of a Social Security number is the best proxy in hospital records for assessing the cost. Most folks have a hard time grasping the concept of billions of dollars; the numbers are so huge they just pass through the mind. That is why it is always better to break down the numbers to more understandable portions by looking at individual examples. A 12-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, as reported by the New York Times in 2003 (“Burden Grows for Southwest Hospitals”), received burns over 25 percent of his body when a gasoline can caught fire while he and some friends torched ants. His unreimbursed hospital charges at a Phoenix, Ariz., medical center exceeded $250,000. Between 1993 and 2003, sixty California hospitals shut their doors because half of their services went unpaid. Nine more hospitals closed last year from losses associated to medical care to illegal aliens. In 2003, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.) said her state spent about $980 million on emergency services for undocumented immigrants. That same year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors estimated public hospitals and clinics in LA County spent $340 million a year to treat illegal aliens. Mississippi’s state auditor (www.osa.state.ms.us) is conducting a performance audit to determine how much his state’s citizens pay out to provide health care to illegal residents. The University of Mississippi Medical Center (umc.edu) wrote off $48 million in indigent care in 2003, and $73 million in 2004. Then there is the issue of “anchor babies” born in this country, at no cost to the parents, for the sole purpose of pulling the rest of the family into permanent residency. Anchor babies make up about ten percent of all newborns in the US annually, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org). In 2003, anchor babies accounted for seventy percent of all births in San Joachim General Hospital in Stockton, California. New Mexico hospitals lose about $210 million a year because of anchor babies and illegal aliens. The federal government will allot $1 billion, distributed among all states and the District of Columbia over the next four years, to cover a small portion of the cost of emergency care for uninsured patients, regardless of citizenship status. Providers can apply for this special reimbursement only after they seek reimbursement from Medicaid or private health insurers. The six states that arrest the most illegal aliens for each fiscal year will get one third of the funds. This year, California receives $70.8 million, Texas receives $46 million, Arizona gets $45 million, New York gets $12.5 million, Illinois gets $10.3 million, and Florida gets $8.7 million. Hospitals will receive most of the funds, with physicians and ambulance services also sharing in the reimbursements.
As our nation’s acceptance and dependence on illegal workers and their families grow, so will the costs to our taxpayers and their families. In this case, however, cost is not measured exclusively in dollars. The cost also will include lives lost because emergency departments that should have provided life-saving services may not be open for business. John David Powell is an Internet columnist, communication professional, and contributor to the Christian History Project. His email address is johndavidpowell@yahoo.com.
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