An article in the Chicago Tribune seems to be using the power of empathy and emotion about the plight of a very ill illegal alien to convey the message that the undocumented should also be covered by Obamacare. And get this, the story is about a patient who received an organ transplant—despite not being a legal resident. From the story:
Because he is in the U.S. illegally, he has no ready access to aid for such long-term medical expenses. To cover such needs for an estimated 6.8 million undocumented and uninsured immigrants in the country, some health-care advocates have proposed broadening the health-care proposals before Congress. But fierce opposition has kept the idea off the table. University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, after a Latino activist campaign and a call from the governor’s office got him included. With the study over, his last free prescription is running out, and with it, his chances for a healthy life.
As it is, Castillo received his transplant and a year of free medicine only as part of a hospital study at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, after a Latino activist campaign and a call from the governor’s office got him included. With the study over, his last free prescription is running out, and with it, his chances for a healthy life.
“We don’t know what we’ll do when the medicine is gone,” said Castillo, holding two nearly empty bottles of pills he takes to ward off an organ rejection.
I am stunned. Political interference got a man apparently known to be in the country illegally included in an organ transplant study, which meant that an American did not get into the study. And now, we are supposed to, apparently, pay for his health care for the rest of his life. Indeed, advocates claim we should pay for illegal alien health care:
Immigration activists say it is “immoral” for hospitals and doctors, as well as a nation, to deny health care to the seriously ill, no matter their legal status. “Those of us with good health insurance just don’t have to live with because we can go get the medication,” said Jennifer Tolbert, a policy analyst at the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, which has studied health-care disparities among immigrants. To some extent, “if those individuals have communicable diseases ... there may be a risk [of] spreading that condition,” Tolbert said...Concerns over the financial burden have led other hospitals to make...decisions denying treatment, said Julie Contreras, an organizer in Chicago for the League of United Latin American Citizens.”These people, some of them are going to die,” Contreras said. “When a hospital denies treatment to any human being ... this is flat-out immoral.”
Once we start paying for illegal immigrant health care beyond emergencies (which should be covered, the patient stabilized, and then deported home for care), seriously ill aliens will strive to come here in droves, and indeed, their governments would have a real incentive to aid them as a way of taking the pressure off their own health care systems. We can’t afford that. We just can’t.
But that would not dissuade activists, who apparently see the USA as a limitless cornucopia. Once universal health care passed, count on lawsuits to force inclusion, or at least dissuade exclusion for those not here legally. Indeed, the litigation has already begun:
Hospitals nationwide have grappled with how to deal with indigent patients without legal status. In Chicago and elsewhere, some private facilities have arranged to have undocumented patients flown back to their own country, a practice that resulted in a landmark lawsuit in Florida last year on behalf of a Guatemalan man who suffered severe brain injuries from a car crash. Last month, a Florida jury found that the hospital was within its rights to have Luis Alberto Jimenez repatriated.
Imagine that case getting to a jury! As much as we care about people such as the man in the story, as much as our hearts wrench at the plight of the world’s poor, the answer isn’t to incentivize the ill and the destitute to come here, but to induce their own governments to improve conditions at home.
We need reform, but not a sweeping government takeover of health care that would not be the end of “hope and change,” but, given the membership in the political coalition of those now in charge, would surely widen over time to include the undocumented ill. Indeed, many experienced political operatives would work overtime to make it so.
