Illegal Immigrants and Health Care in the US

Now, Stop and Think. If the available wages, working conditions, opportunities and services are all that bad, they wouldn't be here, now would they?

New Haven:

You continue ...

"
Remember, that a few years ago, little kids ( age 8-15 years ) used to deliver the paper, either on foot or on their bikes. THese kids could read and speak English and moreover, did not complain about receiving a low (?) wage.
"

Little kids (8-15) do not have to worry rent, food, transportation. or much else to be sure!

and continue ...

"
If the immigrants want higher paying jobs, what's to stop them. All they have to do is try. Likewise, many Americans have worked 3-4 jobs at once, just to pay home mortages and to put their kids through college. Do I hear someone crying for them?
"

Actually, you do hear "someone crying for them". The right wingers call us "bleeding heart liberals" if I remember correctly. Right wingers seem to have a problem with the "bleeding heart programs" which the liberals support so that those who are in dire straights CAN dig out of them.

pResident Bush is too busy directing money to the war machine to worry about these people, let alone any other domestic agenda.
Now that we have invaded Afghanistan, and conquered Iraq, we now are looking at Syria!


Anon

Roger:

YES!

Anon

Although an immigrant myself, I am a US resident for tax purposes. I am fortunate enough to have a medical insurance. I do not mind for one split of a second that my money goes towards the medical treatment of those much less fortunate than I am, be they Americans, or illegal immigrants. I do not see any alternative. If these people were denied the basic emergency care, that would truly be sickening, considering that the social benefits in this country are comparatively pathetic to begin with, on average and especially for the bottom 20% of the population.
Illegal immigrants do not leave their countries and families for fun. Usually they are driven out by misery and desperation. Just like many Irish, Eastern Europeans and Jews were driven out years ago to resettle into this country to form the present day respectable citizens. It is mind boggling to me to see how much resentment they are met with from many.

Daq:

Especially considering the fact that accept for a handfull of Native Americans, we are all immigrants ... a fact that many "Americans" seem to forget!

Anon

Dagmaraka, Irish, Poles, Italians, Jews, etc. were legal[/i][/color] immigrants and they came from the countries belonging to the same civilizational system the USA belonged to. Their respective countries were, maybe, non-democratic and underdeveloped at the time they immigrated, but they pertained to the Judo-Christian civilization.

steissd=very many, jews in particular, were not legal immigrants, especially during WW II when the US did NOT want the european jews, many had to come thru Canada or Cuba and then just show up in the US. My ex father-in-law was a jew fleeing from Belgium in 1941 and could not get into the US so he went to Cuba and arrived in Florida as an illegal immigrant. the same is true for other nationialites, the italian immigrants arrived in the US and were designated WOP's (being WithOut Papers).

So, I'd be interested to know if illegal immigrants to other countries (outside of the U.S.) are entitled to medical care in those other countries? Anyone know?

The health insurance rates in Massachusetts are going up 20% this coming July. The medical malpractice insurance is also going up 20% this next quarter.

I for one, am not paying for the insurance of illegal immigrants. If they need medical care, they should perhaps go back to their own countries for that care. When the time is right, they should apply for citizenship like everyone else has had to do.


Relative to those who would like to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants and others who can't afford health insurance, you should join ranks and form a charitable organization that funds free medical care for everyone, who is unable to pay.

Heeven:
Maybe we should venture north to Canada and see if they'll give us free medical care. We could claim to be illegal immigrants to Canada.

I'm wondering, right now, if someone would like to pay my health insurance for me. Is there anyone out there?

In Israel illegal immigrants are not entitled to anything: they just pay in cash in case of necessity. The only exception refers to cases when they are victims of the terror attack: in such cases government carries the burden of expenses of their treatment.
By the way, such a situation does not cause any serious humanitarian probem: majority of illegal immigrants are young healthy and robust males that come to work hard, so they usually do not have chronic health problems requiring complicated treatment. And they earn enough to pay for solving less significant problems (mainly small injuries resulting from workplace accidents). When the injury is serious, the employer prefers to pay for treatment to avoid attracting attention of authorities to the fact of his illegally employing foreigners.
The legal immigrants (both Jewish and non-Jewish) pay a health levy (ca. 3 percent of their gross salary; in Israel there is a governmental health system, resembling this in the UK), so they get the same medical services the Israeli citizens do.

What's to happen in the US with the insurance companies demanding more for the premiums and the physicans threatening to leave medicine because of the high cost of malpractice insurance?

Couple these factors with illegal immigrants draining the resources of many states, and what you have is a financial headache and as importantly, the closing of hospitals.

Nobody is paying for anyone else's insurance. The talk was of the emergency room care. Now that certainly should not be denied to anyone on any grounds, or yes? The pure fact that everybody is born as a human being as has certain basic rights, at least to life, should prevent such claim. As for their own governments paying for such care, that would be certainly unreasonable to expect. Those people usually flee from poverty and poor are their governments as well. They flee to the rich countries, many of which got rich through adjusting the poor countries' economies to suit their specific needs. If you find it unjust that the U.S. has to pay for emergency care for these desperate people, go further and look into the causes of migration. It is so easy to see everything black and white.
As for Heeven's question, the practices are different in different countries. This is hard to monitor and assess, for you will not have illegal immigrants lining up to fill out questionnaires about what services are they able to use. All I know is a bit about the situation in the European Union, which I researched last year. In European countries (and I would guess that anywhere else in the world, but that is a guess only) nobody is declined ER treatment. Now those that apply for asylum are placed in the asylum camps and do receive medical treatment and regular medical checkups. The stay at the asylum camps can stretch on for years, the asylum seekers are fully dependent on government support and cannot work before they are granted the status of a refugee.
Illegal immigrants do sometimes get legalized - most frequently so in France and Italy that has realized and officially proclaimed the need for unskilled labor for some services they are unable to fill with citizens, nobody will do the unskilled labor anymore. Used to happen in Great Britain as well, it is more rare these days, at least it does not happen on a wide scale as in Italy and France, but is limited to individual cases. In waves, every 5 years or so, illegal immigrants in these countries receive the permanent residence cards. Social benefits are the first ones offered. That includes some health coverage, unemployment benefits, and all of that. Only years later will they receive other citizenship rights, with the right to vote coming among the last of them. The Schengen Agreement sought to unify the immigration policy into the European Union and it is coming about slowly, but with the countries' diverse backgrounds, history and amount of immigration and vastly different immigration policies that were at place it is a difficult and extremely complex process. Illegal immigrants belong to the most desperate groups of human beings on this planet, whose grief and suffering is hardly imaginable to us. It is so easy to forget that when it costs you a dollar or two.

An interesting article on the topic: Navarrette\

Excerpt :
Do you know why 17 states find themselves in dire straits after providing health care to illegal immigrants? It's because employers and companies in those 17 states keep hiring illegal immigrants at bargain rates, and then they either pass savings on to customers in the form of lower prices or pocket the profits.

Either way, it's the employers who should provide health insurance to their employees, and that should include undocumented immigrants. When the uninsured stumble into County General, why should the bill go to the residents of the other 33 states who aren't employing nearly as many illegal immigrants?
END

Before the entire welfare system is restructured in the US (may be never), somebody has to take on the burden. I would not want to live with the knowledge that innocent people die when their lives can be saved. Unless the immigrants are evil villains whose goal is to come here and then cunningly get sick or injured, so they can rejoice how they costed the US taxpayers lots of money.

The problem for the Canadian system is the U.S. citizens who got illegal Canadian health cards at some point, and come over here for free medical treatment at the expense of the Canadian tax-payer. The estimates on the cost of the fraud by U.S. citizens to the Canadian medical/tax system is astonishing. Treatment for refugees and illegal immigrants here in Ontario don't cost us as much as U.S. citizens stealing treatment does.

Not evil at all. Just desiring their children to become citizens (valued by some, but obviously, not all) by birthright. This part of the 14th is way overdue for amendment.

If everyone should receive care upon entrance to an ER, could you please tell me why you're asked for your insurance card, before you're asked about your problem?

If you're sick, that should be the 1st question asked of you. But it isn't. The first question is:

"Do you have insurance"

OR

"How will you be paying for this visit"?


If you can't pay, you must sign a form describing how payments will be paid. Do illegal immigrants ever plan on paying for their treatments in the future?

The reality of life is that nothing, absolutely nothing is free.

I don't like to see innocent people die because of lack of care in the ER. However, what's to be done with increased insurance rates , the closing of ERs and the closing of hospitals?

The buck stops at the American taxpayers door. As long as there is free care, there will be people standing in line, waiting for it. That's a problem with the welfare system. As long as they're people willing to carry the tax burden, they'll be people waiting to take advantage of the system.

If you have to get your car fixed and can't pay for it, will the mechanic do it for free? If he doesn't why then, should anything else, including medical care be free?


When you get an Rx filled at the pharmacy, will the pharmacist fill it for free?

Back to the immigrants and their employers...IF the employers don't pay health benefits, send the immigrants back to their countries of origin. Did they have health benefits in those countries?