This Date in UCSF History: A Case For Care
Originally published in Synapse on January 29, 2004.
A critically ill man who is infected with TB sits at home and refuses to go to the hospital. He has infected his entire family and possibly others. His family begs him to go to the local emergency room, but he refuses. The man is afraid to journey to his local hospital. Weeks later, he dies. Does this sound like an impossible scenario? Not if Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher has his way.
Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, is proposing a bill that would require hospitals to report illegal immigrants to the Immigration and Naturalization Service within two hours of treatment. Illegal immigrants may still receive care pursuant to the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.
This act states that all hospitals that provide emergency care must treat patients regardless of immigration or economic status. Patients can still receive care, but they will then be turned in to the INS for eventual deportation.
If illegal immigrants realize they will be turned into the authorities their willingness to visit doctors in the United States will greatly decrease. This seems to be the exact purpose of the bill: to decrease health care spending on illegal immigrants.
When this occurs, diseases will progress. Non-citizens are still members of our community. They work in the United States with American citizens, live in the United States with American citizens. Furthermore, if a serious infectious disease occurs in the non-citizen community, it will affect all of us.
The United States boasts about its massive spending in Third World countries, the idea being that the United States is a caring country whose only concern is to help other needy people.
Yet when there are needy individuals right here in our own backyard, we want to look the other way. In the face of these emerging disparities, a movement has started between health care professionals to be consciously aware of the cultural differences of our patients. Yet this new proposal seems to directly target specific ethnic groups.
Furthermore, how can physicians critically determine who is an illegal alien without possibly offending an individual who rightly belongs in this country. Should we base the criteria on language differences or skin color or should we take up precious amounts of time asking every individual who passes the door if he or she is an American citizen?
In this country, we seem to be looking in the wrong direction in our efforts to save money and balance the budget. It is certainly true that millions of dollars would be saved if we stopped treating illegal immigrants.
However, millions would also be saved if we stopped large companies from using tax loopholes. Thus, it seems clear that we should stop picking on illegal immigrants and give them the health care they deserve.