Thanks. And I will now agree with your post, in turn. :thumbs:
My city has an extremely large county medical facility that will not refuse anyone regardless of reason, and will usually underwrite all the costs. Being in a large & diverse world-class city with a large immigrant population, the hospital did indeed suffer a great deal of medical tourism just as you surmised. Enough so, that they had to modify their policies recently! So yes, what you claim is indeed real.
But regardless of insurance status for regular or chronic conditions, E.R.'s in my area will serve anyone that comes in. I can't really fault that, though. I wouldn't want any fellow human being to be denied assistance during a medical emergency.
Yes, countries like France and Italy provide free emergency medical care to illegal aliens on humanitarian bases, but once they're patched up and the emergency is over, they are kicked out. Other developed countries don't offer non-emergency (or in medical jargon, elective) care to illegal aliens, on their tax payers' tab. When I say this here people misunderstand "elective" as some sort of cosmetic surgery. It's not that. In medical jargon, elective is any procedure that is not an emergency or urgency. People confound elective with medically unnecessary. No, elective care includes everything else, and 95% of the medical expenses in the United States are for elective care; only 5% for emergency care.
So the problem is, if you insure the illegal aliens who overuse emergency rooms, sure, you save some money by treating in a primary care office conditions that don't get severe enough to land the person in the ER. But if you do that, you offset any savings by spending much more with other sorts of elective care.
Say, for example, that the illegal alien needs a lung transplant or he will die in 60 days. That's not an emergency, and is not covered by the French or the Italian systems if you are not a citizen or a permanent resident who pays taxes. But while you can save $2,000 if you give an illegal alien an office prescription for albuterol so that he won't go to the ER with an asthma crisis, you can also lose $650,000 with a lung transplant, or $300,000 with cancer chemotherapy, or more than $250,000 with heart surgery, and so on. Where do you draw the line? Soon enough you're spending way more than what you're saving.
Why should the America taxpayer pay for, say, the cancer chemotherapy of Mr. Juan Gonzalez, illegal immigrant from El Salvador who got cancer and his cousin told him "come to the US and they'll take care of you"????
Extending non-emergency care to illegal aliens is an extremely STUPID idea, and the better proof is that no other developed country does that.
