- The influx of Illegal Aliens has devastating, hidden
medical consequences. We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what
we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than
what is seen.[1] Illegal Aliens' stealthy assaults on medicine now must
rouse Americans to alarmed alert.[2] Even President Bush describes Illegal
Aliens only as they are seen: strong physical laborers who work hard in
nasty jobs with low wages, who cultivate their families, and who pursue
the American dream. What is unseen is their free medical care that has
degraded and closed some of America's finest emergency medical facilities
and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospital are closing their
doors forever.[3] An important cause of these hospital closures is the
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA).
-
- What is seen is the political statistic that 43 million
lives are at risk in America because those people have no health insurance.[4]
What is unseen is that medical insurance does not equal medical care. Uninsured
people get medical care in hospital Emergency Rooms under the coercive
EMTALA that obligates hospitals to treat the uninsured but does not pay
for that care. Also unseen is the percentage of uninsured who are Illegal
Aliens. No one knows how many Illegal Aliens reside in America. If 10 million,
they constitute nearly 25% of the uninsured. If more, more.
-
- EMTALA
-
- EMTALA requires each Emergency Room to treat anyone who
enters with an "emergency" associated with cough, headache, hangnail,
cardiac arrest, herniated lumbar disc, drug addiction, alcohol overdose,
gunshot injury, automobile trauma, HIV-positive infection, mental problem,
or personality disorder. Definition of emergency is flexible and vague
enough to include almost any condition as requiring mandatory care. Any
patient coming to a hospital emergency room requesting emergency care must
be screened and treated until stabilized for discharge or stabilized for
transfer whether or not insured, whether or not "documented,"
and whether or not able to pay.
-
- A woman in labor must remain to deliver her child. Babies
born to Illegal Alien women are called Anchor Babies for once they are
born, like anchors dropped to keep boats safely in harbor, they pull their
Illegal Alien parents and siblings into lucrative residency. The babies
instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits. They have caused volcanic
eruptions in Medicaid costs and skyrocketing stipends under Supplemental
Security Income and Disability Income.[5],[6]
-
- What is seen is the strong-backed Illegal Alien who will
come to the Emergency Room and cough, sweat, and bleed but is assumed basically
healthy even though he and his Illegal Alien wife and kids never were examined
for contagious diseases. By our glance and by our shrug we grant Illegal
Aliens health passes. What is unseen is that many Illegal Aliens harbor
within their bodies fatal diseases that long ago American medicine fought
and vanquished. Now Illegal Aliens carry drug resistant strains of tuberculosis,
malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, Dengue Fever, and Chagas Disease.[7],[8]
-
- A hospital with an Emergency Room must have specialists
ready to treat on call at all times for all departments that provide medical
services and specialties within the hospital's capabilities. EMTALA is
an unfunded federal mandate. Government imposes viciously stiff fines and
penalties up to $50,000 for each incident upon any physician and any hospital
refusing to treat any patient that a vigorous prosecutor deems an emergency
patient even though the hospital or physician screened and declared the
patient's illness or injury non-emergency.[9],[10] But government does
not pay either the hospital or the physicians for treatments. In addition
to the fiscal attack on medical facilities and personnel, EMTALA is a handy
truncheon to pummel politically unpopular physicians by falsely accusing
them of violating EMTALA.
-
- High-tech hospital emergency units degenerated into local
free medical offices. In California, for instance, between 1993 and 2003,
60 hospitals closed because of over 50% of unpaid services, and another
24 California hospitals closed in 2004. Even ambulances from Mexico come
to Emergency Rooms with indigents because the drivers know that EMTALA
requires accepting patients who come within 250 yards of a hospital. That
geographic limit has figured in many lawsuits.[11],[12]
-
- Los Angeles County Trauma Care Network, built in 1983,
was one of America's finest Emergency Medical Response organizations. Consisting
of 22 hospitals, super-high-tech equipment, superior emergency physicians,
surgeons, specialists, nurses, and technicians, it offered 365-day, round-the-clock
emergency care for people suffering life-threatening car crashes, industrial
accidents, urban crime, natural disasters of earthquake and wildfire, and
national disasters of terrorism. Now most trauma hospitals have left the
Network and so have many emergency physicians and surgeons.[13] EMTALA
contributed to the Trauma Care Network's loss of focus and loss of money.[14]
-
- VIOLENT CRIME
-
- Illegal Aliens perpetrate much violent crime whose physical
results arrive in ERs. [15],[16] "Dump and Run" patients dropped
on the hospital sidewalk or at the emergency room entrance before the car
speeds away usually are connected to drugs and gangs. Patients requiring
tracheotomies and thoracotomies for stab or gunshot wounds are dumped at
hospitals whether or not exclusively dedicated to trauma care and EMTALA
governs their treatment.[17],[18]
-
- While nationally most people coming to emergency units
are not poor and have medical insurance,[19] cities such as Los Angeles
with large Illegal Alien populations, high crime, and powerful immigrant
gangs are losing their hospitals to the ravages of unreimbursed care under
EMTALA. In Los Angeles, 95% of outstanding homicide warrants are for Illegal
Aliens, likewise for 66% of fugitive felony warrants. The notorious 18th
Street Gang has 20,000 members the California Department of Justice deems
60% Illegal Aliens, but 80% according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Lil' Cycos Gang notorious for murder, racketeering, and drugs in Los
Angeles's MacArthur Park was thought 60% illegals in 2002, though higher
now. Francisco Martinez of the Mexican Mafia ran the gang from prison while
incarcerated for felonious reentry after deportation.[20]
-
- Illegal Aliens move freely in crime sanctuary cities.
[21],[22] In Los Angeles, San Diego, Stockton, New York, Chicago, Miami,
Austin, and Houston, no hospital, physician, city employee, or police officer
can report immigration violators to the Department of Homeland Security's
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the old INS). Los Angeles
Police Department Special Order 40 (begun in 1979 by then Chief Daryl Gates)
prohibits cops from "initiating police action where the objective
is to discover the alien status of a person."
-
- Daily as many as 10,000 Illegal Aliens cross the 1,940-mile-long
border with Mexico. [23],[24] About 33% are caught. Many try again, immediately.
Authorities estimate about 3,500 Illegal Aliens daily become permanent
U.S. residents, at least 3 million annually.[25],[26],[27] EMTALA rewards
them with extensive, expensive free medical services if they claim emergency
requirement for care.
-
- Government welcomes Illegal Aliens by refusal to police
our borders, by reluctance to prosecute people who violate basic American
law, and by fervor to please those who snidely abuse our generosity and
cynically ply our compassion against ourselves.
-
- Footnotes:
-
- 1, Frederic Bastiat's Selected Essays on Political Economy:
What is Seen and What is Unseen. Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Foundation
for Economic Education, 1995.
- 2, Madeleine Pelner Cosman's Who Owns Your Body?: Doctors
and Patients Behind Bars. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005.
- 3, Chong, J-R. Hawthorne Hospital to Shut Doors. R.F.
Kennedy Medical Center Cites Financial Problems for ClosureSixth ER in
La County This Year. Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2004.
- 4, John Goodman, Gerald Musgrave, Devon Herrick's Lives
at Risk: Single Payer National Health Insurance Around the World. Lanham
and New York: National Center for Policy Analysis, Rowman and Littlefield,
2004.
- 5, Wright, CM. SSI: The Black Hole of the Welfare State.
Cato Policy Analysis 224, April, 1995.
- 6, Peter J. Ferrara's Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction.
Washington: Cato Institute, 1980.
- 7, Lee B. Reichman's Time Bomb: The Global Epidemic of
Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. New York: McGraw Hill Professional,
2001. www.TBtimebomb.com
- 8, Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague. New York: Penguin,
1995.
- 9, Cosman MP. Medicare and the Criminalization of American
Medicine: 1965-1993. 6:1 National Trial Lawyer (1994).
- 10, Turner GM. HIPAA and the Criminalization of American
Medicine. 22:1 Cato Journal, Spring/Summer 2002.
- 11, 237 F 3d 1074.
- 12, Arrington v. Wong, 237 F3rd 1066 (9th Cir. January
22, 2001)
- 13, Roark AC. Surgeon Tires of Effort to Plug Gap in
Trauma Care-Hospitals: A doctor on call in emergency rooms. Los Angeles
Times, December 23, 1990.
- 14, Weber T., Ornstein C, Landsberg M. King/Drew Trauma
Unit Faces Closure. Drew Proposal Assailed. Los Angeles Times, September
14, 2004.
- 15, Michelle Malkin's Invasion. Washington: Regnery,
2004.
- 16, Jon E. Dougherty's Illegals: The Imminent Threat
Posed by our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border. Nashville: WND Books, 2004.
- 17, Roark AC. Surgeon Tires of Effort to Plug Gap in
Trauma Care-Hospitals: A doctor on call in emergency rooms. Los Angeles
Times, December 23, 1990.
- 18, Heather Mac Donald's The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave.
New York: Manhattan Institute, 2004. www.City-Journal.com
- 19, Weber, EJ. Does Lack of a Usual Source of Care or
Health Insurance Increase the Likelihood of an Emergency Department Visit?
Results of a National Population-Based Study. Annals of Emergency Medicine,
October, 2004.
- 20, Heather Mac Donald's The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave.
New York: Manhattan Institute, 2004. www.City-Journal.com
- 21, Heather Mac Donald's The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave.
New York: Manhattan Institute, 2004. www.City-Journal.com
- 22, Michelle Malkin's Invasion, Washington: Regnery,
2004.
- 23, Michelle Malkin's Invasion. Washington: Regnery,
2004.
- 24, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR) www.cairco.org/articles
- 25, DeWeese T. The Mexican Fifth Column. www.fairus.org
2003
- 26, Guzzardi D. Illegal Aliens: The Health Cost Dimension.
January 25, 2003.
- 27, DeWeese T. The Outrages of the Mexican Invasion.
American Policy Center. www.cairco.org/articles. February 27, 2003.
-
- © 2005 Madeleine Cosman - All Rights Reserved
-
- Dr. Cosman is a medical lawyer located in California.
Her forthcoming book in 2005 is Who Owns Your Body?: Doctors and Patients
Behind Bars. She lectures worldwide on medical law and medical policy,
has testified before Congress on medical law issues, and has spoken in
Washington for Cato Institute and Galen Institute. She wrote the ABCs of
the Clinton Medical World for Congress in 1993. A Director of California
Rifle and Pistol Association, she writes "Guns and Medicine"
for Firing Line. One of her 15 published books was nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize, National Book Award, and was a Book of the Month Club Dividend Selection.
-
- Madeleine promotes free-market, patient-centered medicine,
and Health Savings Accounts.
-
- Her J.D. is from New York's Cardozo School of Law, Ph.D.
from Columbia University, M.A. from Hunter College, and B.A. from Barnard
College. She is a member of the New York State Bar, New Jersey Bar, American
Bar Association's Health Law Section, and American Inns of Court. Madeleine
is Professor Emerita of City College of City University of New York and
a Life Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.
-
-
- Comment
- From Davd B.
- 4-4-5
-
- Jeff -
-
- I'm attempting to get hernia surgery. I finally found
an independent center in El Paso, TX with a reasonable cost, primarily
because they're new and they know the physician. Why couldn't I get it
in Las Cruces, NM, or in nearby Deming, NM? Because the surgery centers
are connected with hospitals, and their prices are between $6000 to $8000
for ONE HOUR!!!
-
- After getting one honest person on the phone, explaining
that I'm paying for this myself and I want to know why it's so expensive,
this is what I was told--"the illegals are coming to the hospitals
in droves and can't be turned away and the hospitals are attempting to
recoup their expense". She continued "I'm very sorry, I know
it's not fair".
-
- No, it's not. It's hard enough not having insurance,
but to pay this kind of outrageous fee for people that are not even supposed
to be here really pisses me off.
-
- I have been married three times, and my first two wives
are hispanic. They have always been angry about the illegals, but when
I see them now they're really angry. So am I....
-
- David Brandt
|
