From: Bill Roh (billroh@churchofvirus.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 12:32:43 MDT
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I was just discussing this with Mermaid - well, not just, but about 2
months ago? In Tucson AZ, this is perhaps on of the hottest issues there
is. Our location 1 hour north of Mexico puts us in one of the hottest
illegal imigration places in the world. And by hottest, I mean very busy
and very HOT. Hundreds die every year crossing the border south of me,
entire families perish in the desert weekly. Temperatures in the summer
are over 110f (43C) and there is little no humidity - meaning people
dehydrate very, very quickly.
Tucson boasts a population of close to a million people including
suburbs. Due to the cost of treating imigrants (well over 250 million in
Tucson hospitals yearly) we had to shut down 1 of our 2 critical care
units. This action will be responsible for the deaths of many people as
there is now only one, very overcrowded, critical care unit in all of
Southern Arizona. It is not uncommon for a Mexican family to smuggle a
dying relative to a hospital here for final treatment AKA the most
expensive, least effective treatment for a patient who is going to die
shortly regardless of treatment. I have first hand experience seeing
hundreds of thousands go down the drain on obviously terminal patients.
Money that could have gone to immunizing thousands of kids, or even
saved a child from lukemia. Instead, it kept a heart beating one more week.
There are lots of things to pay taxes on, and frankly, I am one of the
few who, in any way, does not mind paying taxes. I am proud to help pay
for the cost of running my country. I do not mind paying taxes that will
be used to treat people going to hospitals in the US, be it an American,
a Mexican, an Iraqi. If you come to an American hospital, we should have
the resources to do what needs doing. This is a Federal problem, the
feds need to use a bit of our taxes being sure that vital services, like
hospitals, have the resources to do what they must.
Hopefully my capitalstic tongue won't catch ablaze when I say this, but
there has to be something between socialized medicine and survival of
the financially fittest.
Bill
Walter Watts wrote:
>"In managing the city's Medicaid program, the mayor faces one huge
>variable...New York City's undocumented immigrant population. The
>greater New York City area is one of the country's top five destinations
>of undocumented immigrants, and according to some observers it is the
>No. 1 destination for employment-age males.
>
>U.S. hospitals write off between $1 billion and $2 billion each year in
>health care costs for the treatment of undocumented immigrants. Those
>costs are attributable chiefly to care of the 300,000 undocumented
>immigrants that flow across the U.S.-Mexico border annually. The total
>Medicaid expenditure for the emergency medical treatment of undocumented
>immigrants now approaches $ 3 billion per year (nationally).
>
>New York City has no real ability to gauge the number of its
>undocumented immigrants, as the group is perennially unresponsive to the
>census and other measures designed to determine who lives here. This
>makes efficient management of programs like Medicaid all the more
>difficult.
>
>As is the case with most large cities, it is because the real dimension
>of New York's undocumented immigrant population is unknown -- though
>likely in the millions -- and unregulated that it can unexpectedly
>mushroom to budget-breaking proportions.
>
>Medicaid, which regularly accounts for 10 percent of the city's budget
>and is already the most expensive such program in the nation, has
>swelled an additional 40 percent, or approximately 132,000 new
>enrollees, under Mayor Bloomberg.
>
>....each new adult signed up will cost the city $1,300 and each new
>child $375. To get an idea just how much money is involved, consider
>that New York's Gov. Pataki, in bargaining with the city over cuts and a
>bailout, proposed $1 billion in Medicaid cuts.
>
>.....the one-quarter share that the city must contribute to its Medicaid
>payments is already $4 billion.....Senators Kyl and McCain of Arizona
>have introduced legislation that would reimburse the states an
>additional $1.45 billion per year as payment for medical services to
>undocumented immigrants...New York and other large U.S. cities continue
>to be a beacon for the country's undocumented immigrant population,
>Here's the key. Where are tax payers rights?
>
>...."all Americans can expect an even greater percentage of their tax
>dollars to be consumed by the Medicaid programs of our large cities."
>
>--
>
>Walter Watts
>Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
>
>"Reminding you to help control the human population. Have your sexual
>partner spayed or neutered."
>
>
>---
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>
-- Reason - Vision - Empathy Tools for a healthy mind Bill Roh --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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