Health Care and Immigrants

If all you were to listen to were talk-radio then you would think getting healthcare in the United States as an immigrant is as easy as 1, 2, 3. They forget to tell you that the same bureaucratic system that fails to insure millions of American citizens does a good job at preventing those that are not documented to be in the United States.

Take for example Antonio Torres, a 19-year old from Arizona that is a legal immigrant from Mexico who was in coma after a car accident last June. Let me repeat, the gentleman was legally allowed to be in the United States, there was nothing illegal about his status.

Well, after learning that the individual was uninsured, the hospital deported him back to Mexico. Get that? The hospital not the U.S. government took it upon themselves to decide the fate of this individual and sent him back to his home country while in a coma and on the brink of death.

The New York Times reports, “Antonio Torres’s experience sharply illustrates the haphazard way in which the American health care system handles cases involving uninsured immigrants who are gravely injured or seriously ill. Whether these patients receive sustained care in this country or are privately deported by a hospital depends on what emergency room they initially visit.”

This is not an isolated case, the New York Times reported about a brain injured Guatemalan that was deported. Of course, there are countless others that we never hear about because dedicating coverage on the issue would mean sifting through a book the size of the yellow pages.

Is this how Britain handles their patients or France? How would Americans react if they were to be in admitted into a hospital in a foreign country only to be kicked out or deported back to the U.S. because they did not want to care for them? Is this what the world has become?

The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured released “Five Basic Facts on Immigrants and their Health Care” in March 2008.

The Five Basic Facts were:

1. The primary reason most immigrants come to the U.S. is employment, not health care.
2. Non-citizens are much more likely to be uninsured than citizens, but they are not the  primary factor driving the nation’s uninsured problem.
3. Federal law generally bars undocumented immigrants and recent legal immigrants from  receiving Medicaid and SCHIP coverage.
4. Non-citizens receive significantly less health care than citizens.
5. Non-citizens are significantly less likely to use the emergency room than citizens.

The study concluded that:

“Immigrants primarily come to the U.S. for employment, and recent immigrants tend to work in  low-wage jobs that do not offer health insurance.  Most recent immigrants also do not have  access to public coverage through Medicaid and SCHIP, as federal law generally prohibits them  from enrolling in these programs.  As a result, non-citizens have a very high uninsured rate,  which causes them to have poorer access to care and to receive less care than citizens.   However, because they represent a relatively small share of the U.S. population, they are not  the primary driver of the nation’s growing uninsured problem.  Further, even though they face  greater barriers to obtaining care and receive less primary care than citizens, they have low  rates of emergency room use and are significantly less likely to use the emergency room than  citizens.”

Mr. Green, president of the city-owned hospital, states it best, “This was a kid who came to this country legally, worked here legally and had an accident,” he continued. “For God’s sake, don’t we take care of our folk? To me, this case shows one of the disastrously broken pieces of our health care system.”

Indeed, as long as there is a voiceless group that is ostracized by society, they will endure the blame in times of hardship. It is easier to scapegoat a group then address the issue at hand.