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How does an illegal alien become insured, by the way?
Same way that you do. I know undocumented immigrants who get insurance through their employer. I also know immigrants who are married to citizen spouses and get coverage this way.
What you are failing to see is that the ER crisis is a big problem. Illegal immigration is a very small part of the problem. You are unfairly using illegal immigrants as a scape goat even when if we magically made illegal immigrants disappear we would still have the same problem.
Let's talk about real solutions to the crisis in health care (and remember getting rid of illegal immigrants is not a very good solution since they are a very small part of the problem).
1. We need to make an investment in public health, emergency room service and the number of beds available. If there are specific hospitals or areas that have an unusually high number of uninsured patients for whatever reason (whether immigration or poverty or whatever) we obviously need to find a way to fund this.
2. We need to find a way to give more preventative care and less emergency care. This is an obvious way to cut costs since the earlier you treat a problem the less expensive it is.
The most obvious area in this is pre-natal care. Failing to give pregnant women and young infants medical care is not only uncompassionate-- it is economically stupid.
3. We need to fix the health care system in general. The costs of health care keep rising, the costs of insurance keep rising and the number of Americans who can't afford health care keeps rising. This is a big problem that is politically very difficult to solve-- but we need to solve it.
Attacking immigrants is not the solution. First, we are a civilized and compassionate society (whether you like it or not) and Americans in general are not going to stomach turning very sick people, or pregnant mothers away from medical care they need.
I think stopping ambulances from crossing the border may be reasonable. If this is really happening (more than once) than there should be an arrangement made with local Mexican hospitals. I suspect this is little more than conservative propagands... but if it is true it shouldn't be too hard to stop.
But there are many immigrants who are living here. They have been working and raising families in this country for years and are part of our economy and are communities. These are not people who are crossing the border for a day for medical care. They are long-term residents who, like everyone need medical care.
Of course we need a general resolution for the status of these people (who are now living in limbo). I will post my solution later if I have interest... but now, while they are living here as part of our society they are going to need medical care.
As we, and all the facts, have been saying this is a very small part of the health care pie... but of course as many of them that can get preventative care or can insure themselves, the better.
