Now I have to die for Bush's and PC illegals.  Never mind my higher
property taxes to pay the free array of social services while business
gets their cheap labor.  "Free Market", eh?

--
Keith

http://www.nj.com/news/times/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1105261605299220.xml

Illegal immigrants inundate hospitals
Sunday, January 09, 2005
By ANDREW D. SMITH
Staff Writer

New Jersey's escalating population of illegal immigrants is placing an
ever-growing burden on the state's hospitals, which expect to lose
$200 million this year on care to the underground community.

Doctors and administrators around the state are complaining that the
cost of treating illegal immigrants has forced them to delay the
purchase of life-saving technology or the addition of valuable staff.

And according to the New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA) in West
Windsor, the burden will only increase unless state or federal
agencies step in and pay the bills.

"New Jersey hospitals generate about $15 billion in total annual
revenue, so people may assume that $200 million would have little
impact on the industry," said Sean Hopkins, the senior vice president
for health economics at the NJHA.

"However," Hopkins said, "even with all those revenues, the hospitals
in this state expect to generate a total net surplus of just $78
million, and some 40 percent of the hospitals in the state expect to
lose money.

"When you look at those tight margins, the $200 million figure
suddenly looks much more important," Hopkins said. "For some
hospitals, the money they spend on uncompensated care for undocumented
immigrants may force them to delay a big service or economize on
existing care."

The shadowy nature of illegal immigration has hindered efforts to
tally the number of illegal aliens or to calculate the exact costs
they impose upon the health-care system.

The federal government officially estimates 135,000 illegal immigrants
live in the state, but the Seton Hall University Institute on Work
believes the number may actually exceed 500,000. Estimates of the
number of illegal aliens in the country vary just as widely.

Given the uncertainty about how many immigrants live in the country
illegally, no one can say exactly how much they cost the nation's
hospitals.

However, given that New Jersey's illegal aliens cost hospitals an
estimated $200 million, the many millions of illegal aliens across the
nation surely cost several billion dollars per year. The hospitals in
just one city, Los Angeles, report that they lose $350 million a year
on illegal immigrants.

The federal government bears primary responsibility for enforcing the
nation's immigration laws, but it never agreed to foot the bill for
those who escape its grasp.

To compensate for the multibillion-dollar costs that illegal aliens
impose upon the nation's hospitals, for example, the federal
government is planning to spend just $200 million a year, nationwide,
for the next four years.

Hospitals in New Jersey expect to receive about $5.7 million a year -
about 3 percent of the costs they'll incur - during that period.

Hospitals can get additional reimbursement from the state government,
which pays some money for charity care given to state residents,
regardless of whether those residents live here legally.

In practice, however, charity care covers only a very small percentage
of the cost associated with illegal-immigrant health care.

To qualify for payments from the state, hospitals must convince their
patients to give extensive information about themselves and their
finances. Many illegal immigrants, for obvious reasons, decline to
provide such information. Many others provide false information.

To make matters worse, from the hospital viewpoint, charity care
historically pays out about a quarter for every dollar that hospitals
spend on a qualified patient. Payment levels are higher now, but
hospitals still get less than 50 cents on the dollar.

In other words, hospitals spend big money on providing free care, not
just to illegal aliens but to all types of residents.

Among those who qualify for charity care, hospitals in New Jersey
expect to spend $813 million this year and get $381 million back from
the state. In addition, hospitals expect to lose another $1.2 billion
treating those who do not qualify for state aid and do not pay their
bills.

Most of the money spent on illegal aliens falls into the second
category - bad debt. But hospitals do convince some immigrants to do
the paperwork needed to bring charity-care payments.

More government aid would, of course, help offset both types of
losses. However, officials in both Washington and Trenton refuse to
speculate about the possibility of expanding payments, while Hopkins
and his colleagues in West Windsor express little hope.

"I'm no insider. I have no idea what is happening in Trenton or
Washington," he said. "On the other hand I do know, just from reading
the paper, that the state government expects to face a pretty large
deficit in the next budget year and that the federal budget looks even
worse. In other words, I'm not exactly holding my breath."

Princeton HealthCare System, which runs the University Medical Center
at Princeton, provided a glimpse into how hospitals care for patients
who live here illegally.

Patients who visit either the Princeton HealthCare clinic or the
hospital emergency room must provide basic information, such as their
name and address and some proof of residence. That information helps
Princeton HealthCare figure out whether the patient qualifies either
for Medicaid or for state charity care.

Medicaid refuses to pay for illegal aliens.

Bruce Traub, the chief financial officer at Princeton HealthCare,
figures that even after accounting for government reimbursement, his
organization gives away about $4 million worth of care every year. Of
that, he estimates Princeton HealthCare spends somewhat less than
$400,000 specifically on illegal aliens.

"The cost of charity care affects every other aspect of our
operations," Traub said. "It affects our staffing levels. It affects
our maintenance expenditures. It affects our technology investments. .
. . To give you some perspective, we spend a total of about $4 million
each year on new technologies and maintaining the facilities, so an
extra $4 million, even an extra $400,000, would be a big deal."

The area's other hospitals either declined to comment about illegal
immigrants or provided a brief statement about their commitment to
care for all people, regardless of their immigration status or their
ability to pay.

A statement from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton,
for example, reads: "We believe that everyone should have equal access
to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay. As a
nonprofit organization we finance charity care and other programs to
help those that cannot afford adequate medical care."

New Jersey's hospitals have little hope, beyond government payments,
for the number of illegal aliens who may need their care, even as that
number grows by the hour.

Recent data from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement indicate
that more than 8,200 illegal immigrants sneak into the United States
every day. At that rate, some 3 million illegal aliens, most of them
Mexicans, will enter the country this year, adding to an underground
population that may already total 15 million.

Estimates, however, vary widely. Other analyses of government data
conclude that only 750,000 illegal immigrants arrive each year, while
the 2000 Census counted 8 million illegal immigrants.

The federal government employs just under 10,000 people to guard the
nation's 2,000-mile border with Mexico. In all, federal agents have
apprehended more than 1 million illegal immigrants in the past year,
but their efforts often go to waste.

The government has little room to detain immigrants between their
arrests and their deportation hearings, so it must release the vast
majority of the people it arrests and hope they return for future
hearings.

In a recent study by the Office of the Inspector General, fewer than
10 percent of all aliens ordered deported from the country ever got
the boot. The rest, who were released before trials they never
attended, eluded capture.

Even when the government does manage to deport people, many of them
simply return to this country, often in just a few days.

In California, which has far more illegal aliens than New Jersey, the
state medical association reports the cost of caring for illegal
immigrants has helped force 60 emergency rooms to close during the
past decade.

Those closures, in turn, have led to crowding at many of the others.
In big cities from Sacramento to San Diego, patients with minor
injuries often must wait hours for care.

The situation will likely get worse in the next few years.

The rate of closures is on the rise, according to reports from the
California Medical Association, and considering that some 80 percent
of the state's emergency rooms report that they now lose money,
largely because of the care they give away to illegal immigrants,
hundreds more emergency rooms may be at risk.

In Arizona, along the Mexican border, dozens of hospitals have cut
back on services to cover the money they lose by providing free care
to illegal immigrants. Administrators from one facility, the Southeast
Arizona Medical Center, told local and national publications that the
costs of caring for aliens drove them out of business.

At first glance, New Jersey's hospitals may seem capable of
alleviating many of their own problems with illegal aliens. Even
accounting for the fact that hospitals will not turn away a patient in
need of medical care, a quick call to some deporting authority would
theoretically ensure that no hospital would have to treat the same
illegal alien twice.

As it turns out, hospitals not only have no legal obligation to report
those who violate the nation's immigration law, they also lack the
right to make such reports voluntarily.

Federal patient privacy laws forbid New Jersey hospitals from telling
authorities about patients who break federal immigration laws.

This suits hospital officials just fine.

Doctors concede their obligation to notify the authorities when they
have reason to suspect violent crimes, but they oppose any measure
that would reverse current law and require them to turn in illegal
aliens.

"The law does require hospitals to notify authorities about every case
of wound or burn related to a weapon used in an act of aggression,"
said Ron Czajkowski, a spokesman for the hospital association.

"But the hospitals in this state are quite firm in their opposition to
any law that would require them to report immigration violations.

"Violence is one thing, but immigration is not really a crime. It's a
social phenomenon that happens to be illegal. Besides, if people
suspected that health-care providers would report them, they would not
seek medical care, which would be bad for them and could create a
public health menace."


         

_____

"Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death
of a sparrow in the corner of a barn." -Anouk Aimee, French Actor  
_____

"Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny", Aeschylus (525BC-456BC),
Agamemnon
_____

"I wear no Burka." - Mother Nature
   
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