11 Comments to 'Prenatal Care and Health Care for Illegal Immigrants'
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Prenatal Care and Health Care for Illegal Immigrants'.
:: Trackbacks/Pingbacks ::
No Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Prenatal Care and Health Care for Illegal Immigrants
Posted By admin
In a recent online article by Ben Cair from The New Republic, there are a few interesting facts about health care for illegal immigrants. Well, an interesting story and a lot of pro-immigration rhetoric from an author who uses the term “undocumented immigrant” every other sentence. Besides “illegal immigrant” being a lot faster to type, it’s the correct legal term!
The beginning of the article was about a doctor at Pennsylvania Hospital who oversaw the emergency room treatment of a young woman who was seven months pregnant. The Doctor advised her condition, known as eclampsia, was “rarely seen in the United States.” The illegal immigrant and her newborn were treated for three months, flushing the illegal mother’s brain of excess blood three times.
The cost? $250,000.00 - that’s right, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!
For those of you slow at math, that equates to a quarter of a million dollars. Thanks to many Pennsylvania residents’ complete tax checks, and federal tax money as well, you paid for this one illegal immigrant’s health care. That’s just one illegal, one story, and one major burden on our tax dollars.
However, the article states that if the illegal immigrant had been receiving publicly funded prenatal care, the illness and cost could have been avoided. Take the $250,000 figure and subtract $249,700 from it. According to the doctor, it would have taken only a few hundred dollars worth of prenatal care to avoid the illness and huge expense.
The article also spins health care for illegal immigrants by using a statistic from 1998. “One study in the American Journal of Public Health found that, in 1998, the average health care expenditures of a Hispanic immigrant, documented or undocumented, totaled $972. For a white, U.S.-born citizen, they were over $3,000.” Mind you that is one study from almost ten years ago, when we didn’t have over 12 million illegal aliens living in this country. Back in the “good ole’ days” when many illegal immigrants didn’t think they “owned this country” and didn’t abuse free handouts from all of our public resources.
What to do? Give all illegal immigrants free prenatal care? At least 15 states already are giving prenatal health care. If you live in one of those states you can thank President Bush in part for expanding S-CHIP eligibility to fetuses in 2002. One Republican platform collides with another, and the illegal immigrants win. California, one of the states with the most illegal aliens, has accepted the governments offer and provided matching state funds. So not only are Californians paying for prenatal care, but so are those of you in another state, for illegal immigrants not even using your states health care system.
But again, the question comes back, is this what our country should be doing? Give illegal immigrants free health care? It sounds like it would cost Americans less money in the long run, but how did we even get to this question? Has it really come to a point when a $250,000 hospital bill can make you wonder?
Nov 18th, 2007
So this 7-months pregnant woman should have been left to die?
No, she shouldn’t have been here in the first place, and we need to close the border so we don’t have to keep spending 250,000 dollars on just one illegal immigrant! Let Mexico get their act together and take care of their own….out of the question?
I cannot believe what a state we are in. I don’t mind people coming to this country to build a life for themselves and their families. I do mind when they are not legal, they do not learn the language and educate themselves, they dodge paying taxes and expect to take part in all of the programs America has to offer(welfare system and social security to name a couple). I just want them to be equals, not our dependants. I have a hard enough time trying to raise my children correctly and be a responsible giving citizen without this extra burden. Not to mention our national debt problem and social security crisis. I know that if things were “fair” that our taxes would be half they are. We have to do something about this and never let it happen again!
in response to the last comment, what if they DO learn the language AND educate themselves and are WILLING to pay taxes…but CAN’T. Those who think illegal immigrants “dodge” paying taxes are just ignorant of what the illegal community really goes through. immigrants CANNOT have a driver’s license. they do not have the right to a legal job to put food on their own table, let alone their families table. therefore, they DO NOT have social security benefits to begin with. they have jobs where they are taken advantage of BECAUSE they have no health insurance option and get paid very very little. so what about a minor who had no choice but to come here with her family, goes to school, knows more english than spanish, graduates with honors, volunteers in the AMERICAN community…but CANNOT even further her education becuase of school costs since she isn’t entitled to scholarships AND she CANT get a job since she has no drivers license OR social securtiy. what if (whether pregnant or not) she has a life threatening situation. she probably never really had adequate health care since being in the US because she wasn’t entitled to it, but her familiy’s last resort was to send her to any hospital, since the other option would be death in her home? what if it was your family? what if US fell under bad dictatorship and/or tyranny or even just had widespread disease breakout or just bad government of some kind that you were forced to flee THIS country? what if despite learning another language in a brand new country, working as a janitor despite having gone through years of college here, and not having the luxury of being able to go legally to that new country because so many other americans fled, therefore causing that country to constantly deny visas and legal status? what would you do? what is they closed those borders? people who are narrow-minded enough to think this way are just ignorant, becuase they were born with a silver spoon. they were BORN here. they didnt WORK for it. it was just theur LUCK. so what makes them any more deserving? everyone has the right to better their lives, and the bad conditions immigrants in the US live under is just a testament to how worse it is in their own country. is it their fault they were born there? is it your fault you were born here? the only difference is LUCK-and NOTHING else. i do not advocate immigrants overrunning this or any other country. i do advocate sympathy for human life and understanding that not everyone was born out of LUCK into the US or any other decent country. so in order to solve this problem, human compassion must be applied in order to even begin to understand the situation. the answer is NOT to blame these immigrants for “dodging” taxes that the government doesn’t even give them the OPTION to pay, or learing a language that would take time out of their 12 hour shift days at 7 dollars an hour to learn and yet wouldn’t get them anywhere since learning enlgish DOES NOT legalize anyone. Coming into a country illegally is not a DECISION, its a last resort. that’s COMMON sense. no one has the option of coming legally or illegally and choses the ltter. they have NO CHOICE. and just to point out, legalizing immigrants would most likely trun this recessive economy around if anything, since its a fact that hispanics own just as many businesses and move the economy more. if the 12 million immigrants (or even HALF of them) had decent jobs that paid them more, they’d have time ti go out and buy, circculate the economy, and PAY for their own health care. unlike the many AMERICAN CITIZENS who are considered fat pigs, have social security benefits, have drivers licenses, have their health and youth, dont work half as hard at school and still get into college, and STILL get access to public health care even though they are well capable of having decent paying jobs to pay for it themselves? so a person like this is acceptable to get all this aforementioned help JUST because they were kucky enough to be born at vthe right place at the right time through no fault of their own, but a pregnant immigrant getting half this help in monetary value is considered an abomination just because she was born in the wrong place through no fault of their own? what if the shoe was in the other foot? just think about it. dont point the finger. just think about it? is anyone really at fault?
oh and p.s. NO your taxes would NOT be cut in half…since millions of tax payer dollars are spent DAILY on the war on Iraq. stop using the immigrant problem as a scapegoat, America. dont forget, the 9/11 attackers were NOT illegal immigrants. they were fully legal through the US system. that just makes you think even more about how the system’s priorties are so convoluted. and No, america, not all immigrants, whether legal or not, pose a national security threat. has american soil not experianced a terrorist act in Oklahoma BY AN AMERICAN CITIZEN? and..wadsn’t there an AMERICAN actually involved in 9/11. no he wasn’t hispanic. he was black. so he was BORN HERE.
Let me just tell you that I have been raised here in the United States since I was 6 years old. I speak, read, and write English better then most Americans. Getting citizenship here isn’t as easy as snapping your fingers. I was on a non working Visa until it expired when I was 18. They told me to go back to Europe, where I’m from, and re apply. But I would have to make a life for myself there until, and IF, I get accepted for a working Visa. Now, since I have overstayed my Visa for 2 years if I leave the country I can’t come back for 10 years ..Not even as a tourist. So tell me, what would you do? My parent’s brought me here, and sure I blame them for not getting us citizenship when me and my sisters were young. But that is all in the past, and there is nothing I can do to change it. SO please…illegal…or in my case over extended immigrants aren’t always people who “snuck the over the border”. I came here legally. Period point blank. But I am still denied work, status, healthcare, etc. So I am still here, pregnant and engaged….and getting prenatal care for my baby has been draining. I am paying cash because there is no other way for me to get medicaid. My fiance and I have to get married for my status so I can provide as well as him.
So please don’t act like you know everything about ‘illegal immigrants’ unless you can open up your mind a little more. Thanks
I agree. Our hospital is going belly up for paying all their bills and yet my daughter can’t get help for serious eye problems.The gangs have taken over our once nice town with all their meth, you don’t hear English anymore in the stores,the parks are taken over.You go to an Easter Egg hunt,the women push the little white kids down and give their kids the eggs, it happened to my kids and we stopped going. They carry no insurance if they get in an accident with you,their court cases for shooting each other over bad drug deals is costing our county in the millions, and they got a terrible attitude like, you owe me.What is wrong with the people supporting them? Let them take them into their homes then and house and feed them. My boyfriend lost his job to the Illegals up in Washington because they are cheaper,but they did such a lousey job he had to re-do everything. They laughed and pointed at him when they kept their jobs and he walked away cause the boss wanted to save an extra buck.My Uncle was telling me about a 60 some year old Illegal who was bragging about getting social security after being here only two months.My best friend who is crippled up for life with a crushed disc who has worked all her life can’t get it.What is going on? I feel anyone who supports this are traitors to our country .
You all talk about closing the borders and kicking illegal aliens out but your ignorant minds don’t go as far as seeing what would actually happen if all those people left…..who would work in Construction, Roofing, Housekeeping, Landscaping..Out in the fields and the farms…All the hard labor and jobs requiring being outside in the sun are done by 80% Hispanic people that are also illegal. Just look at the economy right now, sadly because a few people have been kicked out already.
I would rather continue to mow my own grass as I have done for years rather than be forced to pay for food stamps and medical bills of drug runners, rapists and worse.
It is great to have immigrants. It is bad to think that illegal aliens are immigrants, they are low class uneducated ID thieves and scammers.
let me tell you some thing to the last comment what the f**** is on your mind you don’t know what are illegal ppl r goin threw b4 you talk pay attention to how ather ppl are living ok
Mayb some ppl r lucky 2 b here because they wore born here but in the other hand most of us don’t have another choice to come here is not are fult and you are an ignorent busterd who doesn’t know how hard other ppl live
So next time shut your mouth b4 you talk sh**** you ediot
Yes, they’re all not uneducated. lol