Immigrants Deported, by U.S. Hospitals
JOLOMCÚ, Guatemala — High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him in the lowlands of Florida.
Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care.
Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.
What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.
Since being hoisted in his wheelchair up a steep slope to his remote home, Mr. Jiménez, who sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, has received no medical care or medication — just Alka-Seltzer and prayer, his 72-year-old mother said. Over the last year, his condition has deteriorated with routine violent seizures, each characterized by a fall, protracted convulsions, a loud gurgling, the vomiting of blood and, finally, a collapse into unconsciousness.
“Every time, he loses a little more of himself,” his mother, Petrona Gervacio Gaspar, said in Kanjobal, the Indian dialect that she speaks with an otherworldly squeak.
Mr. Jiménez’s benchmark case exposes a little-known but apparently widespread practice. Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance. Medicaid does not cover long-term care for illegal immigrants, or for newly arrived legal immigrants, creating a quandary for hospitals, which are obligated by federal regulation to arrange post-hospital care for patients who need it.
American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border.
Indeed, some advocates for immigrants see these repatriations as a kind of international patient dumping, with ambulances taking patients in the wrong direction, away from first-world hospitals to less-adequate care, if any.
“Repatriation is pretty much a death sentence in some of these cases,” said Dr. Steven Larson, an expert on migrant health and an emergency room physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “I’ve seen patients bundled onto the plane and out of the country, and once that person is out of sight, he’s out of mind.”
Hospital administrators view these cases as costly, burdensome patient transfers that force them to shoulder responsibility for the dysfunctional immigration and health-care systems. In many cases, they say, the only alternative to repatriations is keeping patients indefinitely in acute-care hospitals.
“What that does for us, it puts a strain on our system, where we’re unable to provide adequate care for our own citizens,” said Alan B. Kelly, vice president of Scottsdale Healthcare in Arizona. “A full bed is a full bed.”
Medical repatriations are happening with varying frequency, and varying degrees of patient consent, from state to state and hospital to hospital. No government agency or advocacy group keeps track of these cases, and it is difficult to quantify them.
Most likely , the guy did not have "veehickular" insurance..
Anyway, the article was from New York Times ..
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03deport.html
I oughta . . . Hey Mo!
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NIL ILLEGITIMI CARBORUNDUM
Hey red-pope...........which bar did you take that photograph, is that GEORGE BUSH there on the end drinking whiskey( the 1 with fluffy hair!)
Is bad enough to read sensational news like this one.
Did you know? by the law, any motor vehicle is required to have some kind of Insurance, including bodily harm or death coverage in a third party insurance?
Meaning that MR. Jimenez had medical insurance regardless of his immigration status.
If the drunk driver, did not had insurance at all, he was responsible in a court of law for the cost and damages incur to Mr. jimenez.
Please could you list your sources for this news article?
keep in mind that the kind of health care he got was not just basic. Legal citizens also have to pay for this health. Only difference is if you are legal and can't pay for it you are out of luck and you won't get kicked out of the country. Also countries like his have a poor record of providing even the most basic of health care.
Anyone who enters any country illegally, should beware of the consequences before entering. They should have a back up plan.
The tough moral question. Every human life is priceless and a gift from G-d. As we overpopulate the planet and choke our own species out of existence, where do we draw the line? Well, it has to get drawn somewhere. A community/nation should take care of its own first and foremost. With regards to rich/poor; the rich should help the poor when they can.
Rich develope countries spending billions in develop weapons and researches about stupid things, when there are entire families dying in Latin America, Africa and Asia by diverse reazons ... no country really takes care about those poor countries because they have no oil to protect...
Besides most of illegal residents in US do all jobs that non US CITIZEN would do, or at least at same salary...i bet wathever you want, that poor guy earned less than 5 USD per hour..which is below minimum... and worked more than 80 hours per week... so dont just call PATETIC someone just because you generalize a situation... every human is special because GOD does not create garbage..dont see human as garbage....
LOVE EACH OTHER , SERVE EACH OTHER
wolfman
Yer know F&*% all about the UK health system.You go ask those pensioners who have worked all their lives, and paid tax, who now have to wait 2-3 years for treatment just so some pathetic illegal immigrant can be treated first, cos if we dont, its a human rights issue.
You explain that to families of elderly people who have died cos the cant afford to turn on the fire in winter, cos they are saving up to get private medical care quicker, to ease their suffering.
This also applies to the US healthcare, it costs money to treat people, whos gonna pay, you ?
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NIL ILLEGITIMI CARBORUNDUM
MONEY. No insurance, no way he can be entitled to healthcare. Whether illegal or legal (as stated in the article).
No charity. We worked and pay tax, we are entitled to our healthcare. Never mind the poor people who can not pay taxes.
Never mind the stray animals if they don't eat or get run-over on the road. They are not paying taxes. Let their own species treat them when they are sick.
The story is about illegal immigrant but did not give emphasize on illegal actions carried-out by the hospital in deporting the patients without state's supervision.
Really sick and sad how people treat other people!!!!
"dgoodrebel will always be the rebellious good one"
would also give citizens the boot if they are uninsured and couldn't pay. Sounds like this guy was kept quite some time before they actually forced him to leave.
I agree totally that the government is at fault with illegal immigration... I was merely saying that "humanity" requires that we provide "emergency care" to all who need it (Life or death situations)..
Just like the NHS hospitals in the UK, its a free for all and nationals get turned down on life saving drugs cos the NHS can't afford them, don't let illegal immigrants get treated and then hard working tax payers will be able to receive proper treatment....there..
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NIL ILLEGITIMI CARBORUNDUM
for this man to have free healthcare ?
Like Alexa says, hes illegal, and shouldnt be there at all.
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NIL ILLEGITIMI CARBORUNDUM
The problem is also of humaity... Emergency care must be provided to all , no matter what their status.