The past five weeks I have focused on individual organizations that provide care along or across the United States – Mexico border.
This week, rather than focusing on a particular organization, I decided to take a much broader approach and explore the effects of illegal immigration on the United States healthcare system.
Illegal immigrants in the United States are in a sort of healthcare purgatory. They aren’t legally a part of the U.S. but they’ve abandoned their native country.
So when emergency strikes, which country’s healthcare system is responsible for their care? Who provides the care? Who pays for the care?
Illegal immigrants typically don’t travel with their health insurance card, let alone have any kind of health insurance.
Since hospital emergency rooms typically cannot deny medical care to any person, regardless of their legal status, emergency waiting rooms are nearly bursting at the seams trying to accommodate both U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants.
This increase in patients creates increased strain on doctors and could ultimately impact the quality of their care.
According to this video, in 2000, hospital emergency rooms along the border spent nearly $119,000,000 in unreimbursed care for illegal immigrants.
I was shocked by the statistics presented in this clip -- millions of tax-payer dollars spent on the healthcare of illegal immigrants.
I can understand the unfairness of this situation-- it isn’t fair to be forced to pay for a stranger’s needs. But it also isn’t moral to shut the doors and ignore someone in need.
According to the clip below, some Phoenix, Ariz. hospitals have reached their breaking point on this issue.
When I began watching this clip and saw the graphic “deporting patients” I was stunned. Once I watched the entire clip, I realized the hospitals weren’t acting with morally unjust motives. These hospitals have provided more than adequate care to illegal immigrants but ultimately, the costs outweighed any humanitarian effort.
Hospitals are million-dollar, life-saving businesses and cannot financially devote all of their resources to an outlet without any financial return.
We should never put a price tag on a person’s life but if the hospital goes under, no one can benefit from the medical care.
With the election of our new president, Barack Obama our healthcare system could see a dramatic transformation.
But this transformation is still not drastic enough to include illegal immigrants.
In this clip, I think President Obama makes a great point by recognizing that our healthcare resources are severely limited and must be applied to U.S. citizens before anyone else.
I agree with the president; before we can fix anyone else, we need to fix ourselves. It doesn’t help anyone to continue with a depleted healthcare system.
Even though both U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants have contributed to the current state of our healthcare system, this reform will be funded through the wallets of U.S. citizens and not the wallets of illegal immigrants. Thus, I think it is fair to focus on ourselves first.
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