Posted on 12/08/2012 6:25:54 AM PST by moonshinner_09
As an illegal immigrant, Jorge Mariscal waited eight years for a kidney transplant he feared would never come.
His persistence paid off Thursday when he underwent the procedure at Loyola University Medical Center.
After years of uncertainties, Mariscal said he's excited about his future and grateful for the help he received. But he remains frustrated with a health care system that he worries might leave out an untold number of illegal immigrants in need of lifesaving treatments. "Why can't we be treated the same?" he asked while sitting in his hospital room. "Health care should be a human right, not a privilege. At least give us the chance to fight for our lives with dignity."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Yup... I’ll bring the marshmallows for the fire. LOL! What really concerns me is if some folks (perhaps on a donor list if they die) may re-think their decision based on this. I eventually believe under socialized medicine, the government will harvest what they want from us without consent anyways.
I am with you on this pardner.
Pretty soon Americans would be better off to give up their citiznship and live as illegals.
The taxpayer is getting RAPED!
Terminal bullshit for our economy.
So his mother donated a kidney and then instead of thanking the country that made it possible, he tells us he had a “right” to the operation.
Who pays for this?
Is this why my health insurance costs $1400 a month for just me?
Transplants for illegals igniting U.S. firestorm
Case of smuggled Mexican teen-ager prompting public to cry ‘citizens first’
________________________________________
March 6, 2003
By Joe Kovacs
________________________________________
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Lauren Averitt has a few things in common with Jesica Santillan, the 17-year-old Mexican girl laid to rest this week following botched transplant surgery for new organs.
Lauren Averitt needs 2 new lungs
As did Jesica, Lauren needs a new set of lungs to survive. Born with cystic fibrosis, a disease without a cure, 28-year-old Lauren even shares the same blood type as her counterpart.
“It’s a struggle,” says Lauren. “Every day is different. Some days are better than others.”
What’s different about Lauren, though, is that no one smuggled her across the border to get her on a waiting list for new organs. She was born here in the United States in Wilmington, N.C., and now lives in South Carolina.
The significance of such a geographical disparity has sparked a firestorm of controversy across the continent, with many Americans venting outrage at how illegal aliens like Jesica are able to leapfrog ahead of the many thousands of U.S. citizens patiently waiting and praying for their own personal miracle.
“The insanity meter has finally been pegged,” writes Ben Powell of Northridge, Calif. He says while he felt badly for Jesica when she mistakenly received incompatible organs, his compassion dropped when he learned her parents paid a coyote $5,000 to illegally bring the girl into the U.S. in search of better medical care.
In a letter to the editor of WorldNetDaily, Powell wrote:
Knowing there is a scarcity of organs shouldn’t we take care of citizens of the U.S. first and foremost? I’m sure there are millions and millions of people on the planet who are in need of operations. But we have to face the cold reality that charity must first begin at home. America should not be seen as a giant game where if you just get here you are entitled to services. If we stop this madness and refuse to give any assistance except to citizens or legal immigrants, the flow would subside.
The worst thing I think that’s going to come out of this tragedy is that the surgeon and Duke Hospital will end up paying millions to the family who are still here illegally. Let’s stop at least this insanity now. Simply, no health care for illegals, regardless of what country they originate from.
Other Americans with similar outlooks are sounding off to their local print newspapers:
What a terrible tragedy that 17-year-old Jesica Santillan has died after an apparent mistake made during her heart-lung transplant surgery. We can only begin to imagine the pain of losing a child. Equally tragic, however, is that two sets of organs went to a person who entered our country illegally. Two American citizens or legal immigrants went without organs while an illegal alien got the transplant. To add insult to injury, Jesica’s family refused to donate any of her organs, which might have been used to save other young people. What a travesty! (Christopher A. Hooper, Virginia Beach, Va., to the Virginian-Pilot)
Jesica Santillan was smuggled into the U.S. for organ transplants
Jackie Mills of Raleigh, N.C., told the News & Observer she consented to be an organ donor, but is now reconsidering that decision, preferring her organs only go to U.S. citizens.
“I definitely would not want them to go to an illegal alien,” Mills said. “I don’t think they should be able to come in here and take our hospital and take our medicine and turn around and sue us. This girl was likely to die anyway. She took the organs from two different people [that] could have perhaps saved a healthier child.”
And columnists like WorldNetDaily’s Michelle Malkin are raising questions about the current and future status of Jesica’s family in America.
“Since Santillan did not recover from the second heart-lung transplant, will any federal immigration authority have the guts to enforce the law and send her family back home to Mexico?” Malkin asked.
Covering a Texas community loaded with Hispanic immigrants, the El Paso Times asked city residents if undocumented immigrants illegally in the U.S. should be given transplants. Some expressed strong support for providing for the medical needs of aliens.
“There’s a lot of immigrants that are in the States working for this country,” said registered nurse Virginia Chavez, “and also because my spiritual side, because we’re all human beings and we should lend a hand to others who are in need.”
On any given day, more than 80,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for a transplanted organ, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which admits it gets flooded with e-mail any time there’s a high-profile case like Jesica’s.
There were well over 24,000 transplants in the U.S. last year, averaging about 68 per day. UNOS says there’s a five-percent cap on transplants for non-resident aliens, but stresses the issue of citizenship is not a factor when getting onto the waiting list.
“Citizenship in no way comes into play in the allocation of organs,” UNOS spokesperson Anne Paschke told WorldNetDaily. “There’s no other social criteria. The system does not take into account where you’re from, how much money you make or even if you’re famous.”
She says federal statutes governing transplants specifically state organ policy needs to be based solely on “medical criteria.”
While the number of transplants has doubled since 1988 when only 12,440 organs were exchanged, Paschke says the number of people on the waiting list has grown even faster, creating a larger gap.
“It’s very sad,” she said. “It’s very important [for people] to make a decision about becoming a donor. Many die every day because people haven’t made a decision.”
Meanwhile, officials are continuing to review how Jesica received an organ with the wrong blood type.
“The entire transplant community is deeply touched by this recent tragedy,” said UNOS Vice President Russell Wiesner.
“The national transplant system relies on public trust. We want those awaiting transplants, and the public at large, to know that we are working with the federal government to do what is necessary to ensure that the proper policies and safeguards are in place so that the transplant system effectively meets the needs of transplant recipients.”
Back in South Carolina, Lauren Averitt is doing what she can to raise the $50,000 minimum needed to cover expenses should lungs for her become available. Only $16,000 has been collected thus far. She says she’s been ignored by her local paper in Charleston, but a SaveLauren.org website is now online, and she’s hoping potential donors across America find her.
Despite having the looks of a young glamour model, Lauren says if she ever gets new lungs, she’d like to complete her education to become a respiratory therapist.
“I have a cannula of oxygen up my nose,” she says. “People wonder ‘what did she do to herself?’ I look healthy otherwise, but it kind of freaks little kids out. It’s not much fun going out. I used to be more vain, now I have to be more humble and let a lot of things go.”
As far as the uproar over Jesica’s lack of citizenship is concerned, Lauren says “I really don’t think about the illegal or the smuggling part, but [the Santillan family] should not be able to sue.”
Still, Lauren empathizes with other transplant hopefuls who watched Jesica receive two sets of potentially life-saving organs.
“If I was at the top of the list, I’d probably be pissed, thinking those could have been my lungs.”
Note: Mexico has its own organs’ bank but is reserved only for Mexican nationals, not even legal foreign residents will receive an organ transplant in Mexico.
And what's that supposed to mean???
I'll tell you what it means: it means they charge the cost to general overhead, which then gets allocated to everybody else's bill.
Which means insurance companies have to pay higher bills, so they raise premium rates.
Ha!
I’m so dang yappy you won’t have time to be chewin’ on any S’mores.
;D
I would hope that those altruistic souls who have donor cards would stay the course.
You never know...there’s a tiny chance they could save a US citizen’s life, too.
As far as “them” goes, let’s see what they can do with my cremated ashes.
I intend to be ‘toast’ too fast for them to even lay a paw on me.
[it’s also the only way I can be buried here with my beloved dogs]
Presumably all this back-and-forth angst was conducted through an interpreter.
“Rush University Medical Center also placed Arroyo’s brother, Elfego, on a transplant waiting list. Both brothers suffer from primary amyloidosis, a genetic liver disease.”
Mark Steyn writes about something similar occurring in England. Their muslim `guests’ often marry their first cousins. This leads to birth defects that result in the progeny becoming `children with special needs’ for the rest of their lives, and the responsibility of the taxpaying British public.
So the Arroyo brothers will be “the gift that keeps on giving” for you and me, those of us who will continue to wait in line, like legal immigrants.
Go mini-Galt, 2013, and Feliz Navidad, Senor Arroyo, courtesy of Uncle Sam!
From the article:
Loyola covers costs of transplant
Mariscal’s treatment is far from over. The pills he’ll need to make sure his body doesn’t reject the new organ can cost upward of $10,000 a year for the rest of his life. And paying for those, just like the surgery, is complicated by his immigration status.
Although Loyola agreed to cover the costs of the transplant, Mariscal will have to pay for the medicine. He applied for a grant through the Simon Bolivar Foundation, a medical nonprofit, that would help cover his first year of anti-rejection pills. But without health insurance, he expects he’ll have to pay for most of his medication.
To get a head start on his future medical bills, Mariscal started raising money three years ago. Together with Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Little Village, he has raised thousands of dollars through benefit concerts and other events.
Yes, involuntary servitude of others, whether it be the surgeon or the taxpayer, is a right of the poor and other favored Leftist constituencies.
As we know, these are unalienable rights conferred by the government gods.
This criminal is an ILLEGAL. Detain him deport him and seize his property. Merry Christmas!
I had several competing first thoughts, most already posted upthread, but this is the one that won out for me, as well.
It leads to more questions, summed up with “How the heck did this come to pass?”
A car load of Marines visiting family in Mexico, had a traffic accident. (note: none were Hispanic)
Taken to a local hospital and stitched up, the next day told ,they were good to go.
Returning to the US and not feeling well , three of the four were admitted to the hospital, one staying over a week!
My best guess is they already have 0bamacare in Mexico?
“How the heck did this come to pass?”
I have no idea. I didn’t understand why the ATM machines were in spanish. I didn’t understand why all documents are now in English and spanish. I didn’t understand how someone could sneak ILLEGALLY into a country, apply for free housing/food stamps, WIC, etc.. and get it on our dime. I didn’t understand why a student was suspended for wearing an American flag shirt on Cinco de Mayo. I don’t understand why an illegal can take a driving test in spanish and get a license. I don’t understand why an illegal student can get in state tuition (and apply for huge grants). Sometimes I think to myself, “Are we in this mess because we couldn’t pick our own darn tomatoes?” However, I think it is much deeper and complex. Illegal immigration has been ignored by both parties in the hopes that millions would vote for that specific party. They are now the group that needs to be courted, dated, given stuff... thanks to the American taxpayer.
Let’s see if La Raza can divert some of the $$$ it spends on
political activism to help pay for this man’s $10,000 future annual bills
for the anti-rejection drugs. Eva Longoria and a bunch of other
compassionate Hollywood pillars of society could chip in too.
Which means insurance companies have to pay higher bills, so they raise premium rates.
Yep, that is why you will see a cost of $150 for two aspirin on your hospital bill.
Poor Marines forgot the first rule of travel in a Turd World country - “Don’t Drink The Water”, and “Don’t Breath The Air”.
Shhhh! You’ll frighten away the Hispanic vote.
I know, Republicans should advertise all over Mexico...If you need a kidney come to America. If you need a new heart come to America. If you need breast enhancements come to America. Hair implants-come to America. The Republicans will make sure that you get it all for FREE, FREE, FREE!
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