A Cry for Health

One of the most cliché metaphors used to describe issues of illegal immigration, specifically along the U.S.-Mexican border, is the “toll” that such immigration takes on the American people. The word, used in connection to jobs and the American economy, crops up everywhere, from speeches (and subsequent news stories about them) to editorials.

One instance that the word was not applied to until recently was the economy of hospitals, and the effect that illegal immigration has on a hospital required to treat them without expecting payment. In a June 2, 2005 story appropriately titled "Catastrophe in Care", the Tucson Weekly localized a growing economic health crisis along the American-Mexican border, relating California's troubles with illegal immigrants using up hospital resources to a similar situation in Southern Arizona.

When an injured or ill illegal immigrant comes within 250 yards of an American hospital, the hospital is required to treat them, without asking questions about payment until after the patient is safe and tended to. Seeing as most illegal immigrants are usually trying to escape poverty, they can not possibly pay the costs of treating their ills before they are deported back to Mexico.

Bisbee's Copper Queen Hospital's "uncompensated costs for treating illegals rose from $35,000 in 1999 to $450,000 in 2004," reports the Weekly. Certainly these costs are shocking, and I wonder if it’s indicative of more total illegal crossing activity, or simply if more illegal’s are getting injured in their frantic dash across the U.S. border. The Weekly story makes it very clear that anyone injured or ill is left behind by the rest of the pack, by the orders of the head coyote.

I believe that the Weekly did a decent job of examining both sides of the issue – while they did not have an illegal immigrant to interview, they did present a scenario of what might happen when an illegal immigrant with tuberculosis does not get properly treated – the possibility for the spread of infection is downright scary, especially considering that TB no longer exists in the U.S. and hasn’t for quite some time, which means that our immunity to it has long since died.

According to another Tucson Weekly story and a following editorial by my professor, Jay Rochlin, who was the embedded photographer, the Border Patrol dropped Marta, an injured illegal immigrant off at the hospital with a broken leg without caring much or being responsible for the bill (blech, what a sentence!). The Border Patrol would be responsible had they claimed that Marta was an illegal immigrant that they picked up, but instead said she was an “injured birdwatcher.”

Also according to this story, there is a new federal program which is supposed to grant $40M to Arizona hospitals that take care of illegal immigrants, which doesn’t sound nearly enough to me. Carondelet Health Network alone has costs of approximately $1.5M per year, which they take on as a “Catholic mission.”

Obviously, the issue is a huge one; several factors of human suffering abound. The judgment calls that need to be made are extremely unclear – do we continue treating people who are injured with the knowledge that they cannot afford treatment and therefore risk the closing of a hospital, or do we begin turning away people based on an assumption of their illegality? It’s an extremely complicated problem, with both money and human interest playing parts.

Next week, I'll try to examine the health care system in Mexico, and what drives some Mexicans to cross the border only for health reasons.

As a side note, the Weekly reported having a lot of trouble with contacting hospitals that are willing to address this problem in the media, and I confess that while I have probably not been as thorough as they have (yet!), I have run into some of the same problems. I find it odd that the hospitals in question do not wish to speak of their troubles with illegal immigration, and I would love to examine the reason why in my upcoming story (or possibly an editorial afterwards!) for BorderBeat.net.