Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
They would still get turned away without insurance aside from emergencies though, so... Where is all this magical care to be billed coming from?
-
Practice your interview with the new SDN AI Interview Coach. Choose a school, answer by voice or typing, and receive a personalized feedback report. Available now to all SDN members. Try the AI Interview Coach.
Good for you, UK
Started by Giovanotto
So then they wait until their situation actually becomes an emergency or lie about their symptoms so they can have tests done. We'd get at least 2 or 3 of those people per day at one of the ERs I used to volunteer at. It still racks up bills that don't get paid, whether it's because there is an emergency and they have to be admitted or from them coming in and having to have tests run on them to make sure it's not an actual emergency. Both ways are a waste of time and resources.
Still, we can't legally or ethically provide health care to people that both are not paying taxes and are in the country illegally.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Says the person living in Maine 😉
I assume you mean "we" as taxpayers, not "we" as physicians, right?
I wasn't going to come back in here and post, but what?
You can't ethically take money from the citizens of a nation to provide care for people staying in that country illegally.
So then they (illegal immigrants) should be allowed to die in case of an emergency? Or rather, you think there is no ethical obligation to treat them since they aren't defined as legal by the law of the current political administration?
And to be clear, I agree that we shouldn't be extending health care services to non-citizens, but in an emergency setting I think that changes.
You have to treat everyone in the E.R, and no ambulance can refuse transport.
Mad Jack is basically saying it is wrong for illegal immigrants to be on medicaid or medicare.. (not sure if any areeven on though)
I never said they shouldn't get emergency care- that is covered under EMTLA. Any other care they should absolutely not receive without paying.
Just about every doctor/legal citizen can and does utilize them (illegal immigrants) for low cost labor (e.g. have them build their house, paint their walls, mow their lawns, tend their gardens, grow/serve their food, fix their utilities, etc.)
I would wager that there isn't a single person in this thread that hasn't saved money directly or indirectly due to the labor of illegal immigrants - you included whether or not you are oblivious to the fact.
So it is okay/ethical for US citizens to frequently benefit from illegal immigrants while its unethical for them to benefit by getting non-emergent medical care?
Speaking of illegal immigrants, probably the most legendary amongst them is Dr.Q
He ended up going to Harvard med school, and is now a neurosurgeon at Hopkins.. Look him up
I'm not going to judge illegals, but I do believe in a stronger border security.. When someone immigrates here they get medically tested and everything, and they are legal. Whereas we don't know who is coming here when border security is not tight, and they could have some really bad diseases which could pose a serious risk to infants, and the elderly..
It's a security thing to want tight border security, it's not being against certain people.
He ended up going to Harvard med school, and is now a neurosurgeon at Hopkins.. Look him up
I'm not going to judge illegals, but I do believe in a stronger border security.. When someone immigrates here they get medically tested and everything, and they are legal. Whereas we don't know who is coming here when border security is not tight, and they could have some really bad diseases which could pose a serious risk to infants, and the elderly..
It's a security thing to want tight border security, it's not being against certain people.
Two wrongs don't make a right, now or ever.
We live in a nation of laws. Those laws should be followed. People who violate those laws should be forced to comply with them. It is pretty simple. People employing illegal workers should be imprisoned, period. I think we should have a more streamlined path to citizenship and I'm all about immigration reform as well, for the record. But I do not want to incentivize people crossing our borders by giving them free care that would be unavailable to them in their home country, which is what would happen if we opened up that floodgate.
The illegal immigrants do benefit. They have a job and are paid wages because consumers pay for the goods that the immigrants produce. Furthermore, many Latin American countries have established universal healthcare (some are admittedly not so great, some improving, some already well organized). Thus it would be asinine to provide this benefit to people who willfully break the law and enter the US illegally. You can't incentivize violation of the law, it has never solved the problem ever.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
You bet they're on Medicaid. I've seen women who crossed the border seven months pregnant and are on MediCal by their due date. Hell if I were in a place like where they come from and I had a country full of suckers a few dozen miles north who would provide free stuff I'd do the same thing. It's worthwhile to note that Mexico has universal healthcare yet they still come here.
That being said, once I have agreed to take someone as my patient, I'm giving her the best care I reasonably can regardless of what crimes they committed.
Last edited:
Whether it's ethical to benefit from the labor of illegal immigrants is a difficult question to answer, because in doing so, one is indirectly skipping over one's fellow citizens as candidates for the same job. Like Trump, I believe in putting America first, so it would be nice to see some patriotism and nationalism WRT hiring Americans.
With that said, if someone enters a country illegally, it's completely ethical to pay them as little as one wants for their labor (indeed, paying them nothing would be warranted if they were willing to work for free) and to expect that they pay full price for any services they desire.
I agree, to me it's more of a utilitarian issue. Speaking from that perspective, does it make more sense to provide an illegal immigrant with an anti-arrhythmic that will cost $20/month (which many can probably afford with minimal insurance coverage) or wait until they need emergency care for a STEMI which will cost tens of thousands of dollars that will inevitably come out of tax-payer's pockets?
I'll also add something that @LouSkuntzMD touched on with immigration in general. I find it somewhat ironic and completely hypocritical that so many other western countries criticize the U.S. for it's immigration policies and many people's desire for stricter immigration control when the vast majority of Europe has far stricter immigration policies than the U.S. If you look at data and charts, many of them show the U.S. is actually in the top 5 first-world countries with the most lax immigration policies, which is something everyone shouting for socialized medicine and socialism as a whole seems to conveniently leave out of their arguments.
Ethically, the loss of money is more palatable than handing out the drugs to people that don't pay taxes with the money of taxpayers.
As to our immigration policies, that's exactly why we can't have socialized medicine- it's more tenable to have socialized medicine when you have a homogenous population that shares the same values. That's why many EU countries are losing their **** right now care of the migrant crisis- they've got a bunch of people that are going to be taking from the system without giving back.
This is actually a really common practice. A common low maintenance investment strategy is to place ~1/3 of your money in US total bond market index fund, 1/3 of your money in a broad based total US stock index fund, and another 1/3 in a foreign market total stock index fund. The idea is that bonds are lower risk, lower yield, US stock is middle ground in both, and foreign market is higher growth but higher risk.
Not to mention Mexico's immigration policies.
We coddle illegals like unicorn foals in comparison.
I could make the argument that non-addictive drugs and catheterization are both treatments which cost money though, so is handing out treatment that cost taxpayers ~300/year/patient less palatable than giving treatment which costs $20k+/year/patient? I honestly don't know an immediate solution to fix this (other than forcing illegal immigrants to either pay taxes or get deported), I'm just posing other arguments.
We don't provide such things for the same reason that we don't give the homeless free cheap food and housing (which would be cheaper than the constant arresting, floating through hospitals, etc that they go through now)- because of incentives. Sometimes the incentives are worth paying a premium for, because you don't know what unintended consequences will be like for society. I predict that making life easier for illegal immigrants will make more illegal immigrants come to the United States to utilize services that are not available for them at home. That is not something I want to incentivize.
Fair, but suppose you force them to pay in order to obtain those incentives. Is there a difference between illegal immigrants who come, contribute to society through work and then pay taxes vs. those who come and do neither of those? Setting aside the practicality issues, would it not be more efficient and perhaps more just to both the individual and society to provide the cheaper, preventative treatment to the individuals paying for it? At the same time punishment could be implemented to those utilizing emergency care without paying for it to minimize people taking advantage of the incentive.
This is of course assuming that the illegal immigrants aren't paying taxes (which many do by working using other people's social security numbers)and won't pay their bills (those here illegally are the ones most likely to make payments on bills from my office and often are asking about how to get on a payment plan when I first see them in the hospital while those here legally often ignore bills until it hits collections then let me know they got retroactive medicaid too late for me to actually get payment from medicaid-leaving me with nothing, or if they have ****ty insurance just ignore the bills for their coinsurance/deductibles).
This is why I really feel like we should just do amnesty now, followed by a zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration later. And I mean, like, zero tolerance as in thrown out of the country immediately regardless of situation, and anyone employing them going to prison for 10+ years. The only reason illegal immigration can thrive here is because of employers hiring people illegally- punish the employers extremely harshly both financially AND with mandatory minimum prison sentences, and the incentive for illegal immigration will no doubt decline. After that we should streamline the legal process so it isn't such a nightmare and the benefits of coming here illegally is outweighed by both the risk of getting caught and the relative ease of immigration. Yeah, we'll have to pay more for a lot of services because immigrants work for peasant wages, but the thing is, they shouldn't be being paid peasant wages, nor should we benefit from their poor treatment.
