Posted on 02/17/2002 10:08:40 AM PST by sarcasm
Sunday, February 17, 2002 - Most Coloradans will be surprised to learn that last year the state Medicaid program paid the hospital bill for 6,000 illegal immigrants. The average cost was $5,000 a baby, for a grand total of $30 million. Nor is that all. Because the U.S. Constitution makes every baby born in this country a U.S. citizen, those 6,000 babies immediately qualified for the full range of services provided under Medicaid, at a cost the state does not even tabulate. The qualification process for Medicaid payments to illegal immigrants isn't complicated or difficult. Pregnant women may arrive at a hospital emergency room prior to birth and declare that they lack proper documentation of immigration status (that is, that they are here illegally) and state they can't pay for care. Immigrant women aren't limited in their choice of hospitals. Denver Health (formerly Denver General) last year handled 1,850 births to illegal immigrants, or more than half of the total births in that facility. Just recently, hospital officials said they will ask taxpayers to approve a $150 million bond issue to pay for, among other things, a bigger obstetrics unit. The hospital director said the unit was built to handle 1,600 births per year but last year the total exceeded 3,500. The program that covers the cost of these births is the emergency room Medicaid program. This is not to be confused with the regular Medicaid payments or with state and federal payments to the medically indigent. Hospitals sometimes suffer in providing non-emergency indigent services because payments don't cover the full cost. In the case of emergency care to pregnant immigrant women, the bill is paid in full.
There are a couple of stunning things about these numbers. The 6,000 births to illegal immigrants are a full 40 percent of the 15,500 births paid for as part of the Medicaid fee-for-service program. Medicaid also pays for some babies through a program using HMOs, but illegal immigrants can't enroll in the HMO program. According to state officials, Medicaid now pays hospital costs for fully a third of all births in Colorado. This is a surprising percentage in view of the fact that last year was, at least until Sept. 11, a year in which the state's economy was doing very well. The births to illegal immigrants are a major factor. As for other major Medicaid expenditures, there is no effective way to measure the impact that illegal immigration is having. Some of the most expensive Medicaid cases develop from an initial hospital visit. Two years ago, for example, a premature baby case eventually produced a tab of $1 million, and neonatal cases overall averaged $195,000. What percentage of these expensive cases involved illegal immigrants was not reported. Last week, KOA Radio's Mike Rosen was interviewing Gov. Bill Owens when a female caller asked the governor why illegal immigrants seemingly had an easier time getting Medicaid coverage than do American citizens. The lady said she had been told that immigrants only had to say they were undocumented and that they needed the service. There wasn't time for the governor to fully respond, but as it turns out the lady was mostly correct. Illegal immigrants can easily get emergency room care, which includes the birth of a baby. It is not true that they can apply for and get other routine coverage under Medicaid. There is no suggestion here that medical care should be denied any person in need. What is recommended is that the media do a better job of providing information on the impact of illegal immigration on Medicaid and other programs, especially public education. If the state's voters and the American public generally have access to accurate and timely information, it may be assumed it will be taken into account every time there is a debate over border security, amnesty, guest worker proposals or any number of current government programs. There are many groups and interests that for one reason or another don't want this information to be available or to be discussed. Unfortunately, they currently outnumber and far outweigh in political influence those groups and interests that do. Al Knight (alknight@mindspring.com) is a member of The Denver Post editorial board.
Narrow, indeed.
Right you are Joe. Bush is burning the candle at both ends with the war on terrorism by leaving our borders wide-open and "incredibly" allowing immigration from 3rd world terrorist hellholes to continue. I can't figure it out either. I'd laugh but I think the joke is on us.
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