Illegal aliens cost California hospitals more than $1 billion annually

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Living in Ventura County, I felt a need to post this article. It is written by an old SOS member and addresses a situation I personally had to deal with. The hospital closest to my home, Santa Paula Hospital, went broke and was shut down for 3 years due to the overuse by Illegal Aliens. That meant during those 3 years, a 25 mile drive to Ventura's emergency room instead of 10 to Santa Paula for the residents of Fillmore.


Illegal aliens cost California hospitals more than $1 billion annually
Dave Gibson
Immigration Reform Examiner
According to the California Hospital Association (CHA), illegal aliens cost hospitals across the state about $1.25 billion a year in unpaid medical care.
The CHA recently stated that $26 million of those costs are absorbed in the eight hospitals in Ventura County alone.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) is asking the Obama administration to compensate hospitals for the care they extend to the millions foreign nationals living in this country illegally.
In June, AHA President Richard Umbdenstock sent a letter to President Obama, reminding him that while federal law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to every patient who walks through the doors, those hospitals are now forced to eat the costs of treating uninsured illegal aliens.
Umbdenstock wrote that the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act mandates treatment of the unisured “yet federal support for hospitals providing these services to the undocumented population is virtually nonexistent. Many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services or close beds.”
He continued: “Hospitals should not have to bear the burden.”
U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has fought for tougher immigration enforcement for many years, and recently told the Ventura County Star: “When you see $5 aspirin, it’s not $5 aspirin, it’s not corruption, it’s the hospital trying to take care of the illegal alien who didn’t have insurance.”
Rohrabacher went on to say: “As long as we’re providing benefits, more and more of them will come to get the benefits. You can’t blame them for that…It’s bankrupting our country.”
In 2003, the American Southwest saw 77 hospitals enter bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills incurred by illegal aliens. A staggering 84 hospitals in California have been forced to close their doors because of the growing crisis. Hospitals which manage to remain open, then pass the unpaid costs onto the rest of us, which translates into more out-of-pocket expenses and higher insurance premiums for all Americans.

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