--Kim
At 06:16 AM 6/7/2010, you wrote:
Just One Hospital, Unbelievable!
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution
and for a variety of reasons:
1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963
2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after
3. Jack Ruby-who killed Oswald, died there a few years later.
On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward
in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's
almost 44 per day---every day)
A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave
birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants.
That's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas.
According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938
babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in
surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers
kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.
The average patient in Parkland in maternity wards is 25 years old, married
and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By
law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration
status or ability to pay.
OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday,
middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do.
Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE.
The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient
at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child---her previous two
were also born at Parkland. Her first two deliveries were free and the
Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost $200 to have them in
Mexico. This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for
the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not
that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away. (I wonder why they even
bother asking at this point.)
How long has this been going on? What are the long-term effects? Well,
another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after
her mother entered the US illegally - now she is having her own child there
as well. (That's right; she's technically a US citizen.)
These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition,
birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car
seats, bottles, diapers and formula. Most of these things are available to
American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then,
the red tape involved is almost insurmountable.
Because these women are illegal immigrants, they do not have to provide any
sort of legitimate identification - no proof of income. An American citizen
would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their
annual income - an illegal immigrant need only claim to be poor and the
hospital must take them at their word.
Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County residents who earn
less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not
refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the 'free' care is not so
easy for Americans.)
There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for
un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free
treatment because they resided outside of Dallas County so the hospital is
going to sue them! Illegal's get it all free! But U. S. citizens who live
outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this?
As if that isn't annoying enough, the illegal immigrant patients are
actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP
story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate
comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor
was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced
to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a
great injustice to her. In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff,
Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for
applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the
University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training
facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already
jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a
ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement.
Sorry for the length, but this needs wide circulation particularly to our
"employees" in Congress. Remember that this is about only ONE hospital in
Dallas, Texas. There are many more hospitals across our country that must
also deal with this.
PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY U.S. CITIZEN YOU KNOW.
If you want to verify accuracy:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/parkland.asp
I checked with snopes; it's correct.
Deb -- Did you read the Snopes article? Parkland is a PRIVATE hospital that CHOOSES to do this (yes it's substantially true). And these babies are NOT paid for by local taxes.
Besides that, it isn't illegal Latinos that are responsible for there being no jobs in the USofA. They are a scapegoat. You are directed to be angry at them to hide the true culprits: the CEOs of big corporations who sent your jobs overseas in order to make more money and make you make less money. They will not be satisfied until all Americans are serfs barely subsisting on meager income and starving with no healthcare. That's what they want -- they hate us because we tried to have a democracy that existed for the good of the common man. They want to force us back into a monarchy/oligarchy, run for the good of the already-rich. They hate that we tried to have a prosperous middle class that thought well of itself.
The solution to jobs is to 1) reinstate high tariffs (so that goods brought in from other countries cost as much as goods made here. Then they will go back to making them here. And 2) Reinstate high income taxes on the very wealthy, like they had in the fifties. In the fifties, the middle class was doing so well that they could afford a house, a vacation, retirement, and college for the kids, all on a SINGLE income! Can you imagine that? the top income tax rate (and many actually paid it because there weren't as many loopholes then) was 90%. And they were still rich. It wasn't a burden then, why should it be now? What happens when the income taxes are that high is that salaries equalize: they pay the employees more and themselves less, because they don't bother to pay themselves more because it goes to taxes, and then there is more left to pay to the workers.
Americans, who pay lower income tax than most developed countries, still repeat their mantra about paying too much. That's just adolescent feelings of entitlement: The government exists to do things that we do better when we pool our money and do it together. That has proved to be not just roads and military, but for example, health care too. Think about it this way: if you got full free health care but had to pay two hundred a month more in taxes (I say that amount because I am paying about $600 a month for my health care), it would be a bargain because I would get rid of that $600 a month bill but have to pay $200 instead. That sounds good to me. I think a lot of the people who don't want government health care forget that the other healthcare bills they have would go away if we had Single Payer health care. For someone employed who is only paying much less (than the $600 I am paying) because their employer is paying the rest, well, they'd get "the rest" now in their salary as income. It's still a bargain.
Healthcare is just the most obvious example. Fire departments, police, Education, all the regulations and supervision of flying, the weather service, Coast Guard, Border patrol, national research laboratories, NASA, University research, National Park Service, emergency aid to states (FEMA, etc.) nuclear regulatory authority, the EPA, are all other examples of what our taxes pay for.
But the original idea of America, what was different from Europe at the time, was that it was supposed to be for the benefit of the ordinary middle class person rather than rich people. We were supposed to be a classless society, with no nobility. Not happening.....
sorry for the rant,
--Kim
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