Illegal Aliens and American Medicine
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.
The Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 10 Number 1 - Spring 2005
The Seen and the Unseen
The influx of illegal aliens has serious 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....
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 hospitals are closing their doors. 'Anchor babies' born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income....
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By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.
What is seen is the political statistic that 43 million lives are at risk in America because of lack of medical insurance. What is unseen is that medical insurance does not equal medical care. Uninsured people receive medical care in hospital emergency departments (EDs) under the coercive Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA), which obligates hospitals to treat the uninsured but does not pay for that care. Also unseen is the percentage of the uninsured who are illegal aliens. No one knows how many illegal aliens reside in America. If there are 10 million, they constitute nearly 25 percent of the uninsured. The percentage could be even higher.
EMTALA
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires every ED to treat anyone who enters with an 'emergency' - including cough, headache, hangnail, cardiac arrest, herniated lumbar disc, drug addiction, alcohol overdose, gunshot wound, automobile trauma, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive infection, mental problem, or personality disorder.... Any patient coming to a hospital ED requesting 'emergency' care must be screened and treated until ready for discharge, or stabilized for transfer - whether or not insured, 'documented,' or able to pay. A woman in labor must remain to deliver her child.
...EMTALA is an unfunded federal mandate. Government imposes viciously stiff fines and penalties on any physician and any hospital refusing to treat any patient that a zealous prosecutor deems an emergency patient, even though the hospital or physician screened and declared the patient's illness or injury non-emergency....
High-technology EDs have degenerated into free medical offices. Between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals verge on closure. Even ambulances from Mexico come to American EDs with indigents because the drivers know that EMTALA requires accepting patients who come.
...Los Angeles County Trauma Care Network, built in 1983, was one of America's finest emergency medical response organizations.... EMTALA contributed to the Trauma Care Network's loss of focus and loss of money....
In Los Angeles, 95 percent of outstanding homicide warrants are for illegal aliens, as are 66 percent of fugitive felony warrants. The notorious 18 Street Gang has 20,000 members, of whom 60 to 80 percent are illegal aliens, according to the California Department of Justice and the Los Angeles Police Department, respectively....
Illegal aliens move freely in crime sanctuary cities. In Los Angeles, San Diego, Stockton, New York, Chicago, Miami, Austin, and Houston, no hospital, physician, city employee, or police officer is permitted to report immigration violators to the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement... Los Angeles Police Department, begun in 1979 by Chief Daryl Gates, prohibits police officers from 'initiating police action where the objective is to discover the alien status of a person.'
As many as 10,000 illegals cross the 1,940-mile-long border with Mexico each day. About 33 percent are caught. Many try again, immediately. Authorities estimate about 3,500 illegal aliens daily become permanent U.S. residents - at least 3 million annually. EMTALA rewards them with extensive, expensive medical services, free of charge, if they claim an emergency need for care....
Anchor Babies
American hospitals welcome 'anchor babies.' Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders.
Anchor babies... instantly qualify for public welfare aid. Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.'
In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital's maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal births. Now they account for substantially more than half....
Illegal aliens have translators, advocates, and middlemen supplied by immigrants' civil rights groups or by Medicaid. MediCal in 2003 had 760,000 illegal aliens, up from 2002 when there were 470,000. Supplemental Security Income is a nonmeans- tested federal grant of money and food stamps. People qualify easily. Scams, frauds, and cheats are rampant....
Among the organizations directing illegal aliens into America's medical systems are the Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the National Immigration Law Center; the American Immigration Lawyers Association; the American Bar Association's Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice, and Pro Bono; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Council of George Soros's Open Society Institute; the Migration Policy Institute; the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights; and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And there are more...
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.
The Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 10 Number 1 - Spring 2005
The Seen and the Unseen
The influx of illegal aliens has serious 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....
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 hospitals are closing their doors. 'Anchor babies' born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income....
Read More ?
By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.
What is seen is the political statistic that 43 million lives are at risk in America because of lack of medical insurance. What is unseen is that medical insurance does not equal medical care. Uninsured people receive medical care in hospital emergency departments (EDs) under the coercive Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA), which obligates hospitals to treat the uninsured but does not pay for that care. Also unseen is the percentage of the uninsured who are illegal aliens. No one knows how many illegal aliens reside in America. If there are 10 million, they constitute nearly 25 percent of the uninsured. The percentage could be even higher.
EMTALA
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires every ED to treat anyone who enters with an 'emergency' - including cough, headache, hangnail, cardiac arrest, herniated lumbar disc, drug addiction, alcohol overdose, gunshot wound, automobile trauma, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive infection, mental problem, or personality disorder.... Any patient coming to a hospital ED requesting 'emergency' care must be screened and treated until ready for discharge, or stabilized for transfer - whether or not insured, 'documented,' or able to pay. A woman in labor must remain to deliver her child.
...EMTALA is an unfunded federal mandate. Government imposes viciously stiff fines and penalties on any physician and any hospital refusing to treat any patient that a zealous prosecutor deems an emergency patient, even though the hospital or physician screened and declared the patient's illness or injury non-emergency....
High-technology EDs have degenerated into free medical offices. Between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals verge on closure. Even ambulances from Mexico come to American EDs with indigents because the drivers know that EMTALA requires accepting patients who come.
...Los Angeles County Trauma Care Network, built in 1983, was one of America's finest emergency medical response organizations.... EMTALA contributed to the Trauma Care Network's loss of focus and loss of money....
In Los Angeles, 95 percent of outstanding homicide warrants are for illegal aliens, as are 66 percent of fugitive felony warrants. The notorious 18 Street Gang has 20,000 members, of whom 60 to 80 percent are illegal aliens, according to the California Department of Justice and the Los Angeles Police Department, respectively....
Illegal aliens move freely in crime sanctuary cities. In Los Angeles, San Diego, Stockton, New York, Chicago, Miami, Austin, and Houston, no hospital, physician, city employee, or police officer is permitted to report immigration violators to the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement... Los Angeles Police Department, begun in 1979 by Chief Daryl Gates, prohibits police officers from 'initiating police action where the objective is to discover the alien status of a person.'
As many as 10,000 illegals cross the 1,940-mile-long border with Mexico each day. About 33 percent are caught. Many try again, immediately. Authorities estimate about 3,500 illegal aliens daily become permanent U.S. residents - at least 3 million annually. EMTALA rewards them with extensive, expensive medical services, free of charge, if they claim an emergency need for care....
Anchor Babies
American hospitals welcome 'anchor babies.' Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders.
Anchor babies... instantly qualify for public welfare aid. Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.'
In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital's maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal births. Now they account for substantially more than half....
Illegal aliens have translators, advocates, and middlemen supplied by immigrants' civil rights groups or by Medicaid. MediCal in 2003 had 760,000 illegal aliens, up from 2002 when there were 470,000. Supplemental Security Income is a nonmeans- tested federal grant of money and food stamps. People qualify easily. Scams, frauds, and cheats are rampant....
Among the organizations directing illegal aliens into America's medical systems are the Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the National Immigration Law Center; the American Immigration Lawyers Association; the American Bar Association's Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice, and Pro Bono; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Council of George Soros's Open Society Institute; the Migration Policy Institute; the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights; and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And there are more...
