Guest MINDSETTER™ Terry Gorman: Illegal Aliens Drive Up Hospital Costs
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Using the uncompensated care that has been provided by Lifespan and the rest of the hospitals in our capital city as an excuse not to “chip in” a little more to help Providence with its budget woes is disingenuous.
Maybe if someone took a deeper look into the uncompensated care scenario some light might be shed on it.
I seem to recall in 2008 alone the state paid the entire hospital system in our state $138 million in uncompensated care out of a request for $175 million. I believe a significant portion of those funds are used to pay for voluntary medical services to Illegal Aliens who are only entitled to "Emergency Medical Care.”
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The hospitals claim they have no way to determine what portion of that money pays for the services which fall outside the emergency medical care required by the Federal Government. I appeared several years ago on a local cable TV show (Trillo Talks) along with a young lady who was disguised to protect her identity. She was an employee of one of the Lifespan hospitals and stated emphatically that she was required to annotate every expense incurred by her patients with the “special code”(for illegal aliens).
A daily log was kept in order to report every penny. She also stated that cost records were kept of follow up visits that were made to the homes of these special code patients to make sure they were properly taking their medications, in addition to the costs for interpreter services. So much for not being able to determine specific costs for services to illegal aliens.
Additionally, do the hospitals actually expect us to believe that they can just submit a number, without details and substantiation, to the state and in turn automatically receive the requested amount of uncompensated care? It would be interesting to see a copy of such a report. How much better off would we all be if Lifespan were only treating American citizens, legal immigrants and only emergencies for illegal aliens? At least with a portion of that population they might stand a chance of being properly compensated for their services. Then possibly it would not be such a supposed “burden” for them to pay a fair share.
For starters maybe someone could determine the cost for the services hospitals in the state, including Lifespan, provided to the 350 (as reported by our own DHS ) illegal alien pregnant women for prenatal care, delivery, postpartum care and even long term family planning in 2011. Remember each one of those successful pregnancies results in a new American Citizen that becomes eligible for Welfare, Snap ( food stamps ), medical care, education and subsidized housing until they reach 18 years of age.
All of those social services are delivered via the illegal alien mother. There is no limit on the number of Pregnant Illegal Alien women that can arrive at the doors of our hospitals each and every year. I could go on and on.
We need to become informed.
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