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Alert Archive: July 2009

 

July 2009

What La Raza Doesn’t Want You to Know

Illegal Immigrants are Major Contributors to Rising Health Care Costs

            Last month, La Raza Unida sponsored a conference on the proposed government health care Bill.   A speaker warned the attendees, “If the American People Find Out That This Bill Is About Giving Health Care to Non-Citizens, They Will Rise Up Against It.”  The link describing the conference,  https://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/06/red-alert-la-raza-if-american-people.html, was pulled within several days, which could be more food for thought.

            Nevertheless, the cat is out of the bag.  One attendee who was not quite with the program – how did she get in? – reports further discussion of the proposed government health care Bill: “… they also said that 75% of the children who will be picked up in this will be non-citizens and that 44% of the uninsured are non-citizens and they can’t possibly allow the American people to know this.”

            Largely hidden from the public is the fact that the rapid increase in the medically uninsured to today’s 45 million coincided with legal immigration of over 2 million annually plus offspring, and an uncounted surge in illegal aliens.

            State budget woes are directly related to the immigration crisis.  As flat-broke California issues IOUs to Americans, Investor’s Business Daily (July 13, 2009, “Bailing Out Illegals”) states that illegal aliens alone “add about $4 billion to $6 billion in costs, primarily in the area of schools, prisons and jails, and emergency rooms.”  Those figures do not count the cost of California’s many non-citizen legal immigrants.

            Shifting such costs to the US taxpayer through a federal government healthcare insurance program would go far toward closing California’s $26 billion budget shortfall.  But is it fair to Americans?

            Uninsured immigrants access medical services in various ways, including school programs and emergency rooms.  Congress mandated the emergency room route through EMTALA, a program which forces a hospital to care for anyone who drags himself to within 100 yards of its door.  Mandated services include evaluating and stabilizing the patient, and delivering a woman in labor.

            In practice, hospitals often do much more than stabilize a patient.  Hospitals and physicians fear lawsuits so uninsured patients are often hospitalized for long periods.  Hospitalizations can extend for long periods, accounting, for example, for more than $2 million in uncompensated care provided by one Idaho County to an illegal alien from Mexico.

            Such cases are surprisingly common.  A government-run healthcare insurance program would make them much more common.  The main difference would be that the hospital would have little incentive to discharge the patient.  Secure in knowing that the cost would be paid by the taxpayer, abuse of the system is a virtual certainty.

            The immigrant population already uses medical services free of charge.  Government-funded healthcare would give the medically-indigent immigrant sector vastly easier access to medical services.  Without a doubt, use would increase.  American citizens would pay.

            And of course the continuing provision of Free Health Care to Aliens serves as a magnet to encourage even more to come to the USA to get the freebies.

            Will Congress resist this unfair program?  Or will Congress shrug and ask, “What’s the big deal?”

Contact members of Congress to say:

            NO! to free Health Care to Illegal Aliens!
            NO! to an Illegal Alien Amnesty!
            NO! to the DREAM Act (S. 729 and H.R. 1751)!
            NO! to the AgJobs Amnesty (S. 1038 and HR 2414)!
            YES! to a Moratorium on Mass Immigration!
            YES! to extending the E-Verify Program!
            YES! to the “No Birthright Citizenship” Bill! (HR 1868)
            NOW the USA needs a Moratorium more than ever!

            Only BALANCE and its ASAP Coalition allies push a five year zero-net-immigration moratorium.  We earnestly ask you to dig down deep and make as large a Special Donation as you can this year to support the #1 population and environment organization in the U.S -- Population-Environment BALANCE!