The New York Times (via Kaiser Network) featured an article last Sunday about how U.S. hospitals are deporting uninsured illegal aliens, sending them back to their home countries for continued medical care.
U.S. nursing homes are unwilling to take uninsured illegal aliens as patients, and Medicaid does not cover long-term care for them. Medicaid does cover a small portion of emergency services, however. According to federal law, hospitals that receive Medicare funds must transfer or refer patients to post-hospital care facilities. Some of these hospitals are sending patients to their home countries, where care is, let’s say, not as good as care in the U.S.
The option? Keep illegal aliens in acute care facilities, which raises health care costs for everyone else. An illegal alien named Luis Alberto Jimenez was injured in a car accident, costing Florida $1.5 million to care for him. A circuit court judge allowed the hospital to return Jimenez to Guatemala, but the appeals court overturned the ruling. An excerpt from the story:
The court said that there was no evidence to support that Guatemala would provide the appropriate care for Jimenez required under federal law and that [Judge] Fennelly overstepped his bounds in a deportation issue that should have been handled by the federal government.
The new ruling sets up hospitals for lawsuits if they deport seriously injured uninsured illegal aliens. So the patient owes the hospital money, but taxpayers are stuck with the bills, and hospitals face lawsuits for trying to save the state money.
(Photo credit: Josh Haner/The New York Times)
