A Caring Nation

By Daniel Hamon

Last week, an article in the LA Times mentioned how Marguerita Toribio has been receiving free medical care in California: "Roughly 2,000 times over the last 17 years, Marguerita Toribio...has climbed into a cushioned recliner for the three-hour dialysis treatment that keeps her alive. She has never seen a bill. U.S. taxpayers have covered the entire cost of her treatment in California: more than $500,000 and rising, not including a kidney transplant in 1993."

That kidney failed after Toribio moved to North Carolina because that state did not pay for her anti-rejection medicines nor for the dialysis needed after the kidney's failure. A social worker there gave her a plane ticket to return to California so that she could get the medical care she needed but could not afford.

The article also mentions Teresita Aquino, who has been receiving free dialysis three days a week for the last eight years and Delia Lopez who recently started dialysis treatments.

Toribio, Aquino and Lopez are undocumented immigrants in the United States and they are quoted in the article saying that they would not have access to or be able to afford their treatment in Mexico or the Philippines: their countries of origin.

And how often does this happen?: "Last year, 52 of the 1,912 kidney transplants in California were for illegal immigrants...The number of undocumented immigrants on government-funded dialysis jumped from 835 to 1,327 between 1998 and 2001 but has remained fairly steady since."

The taxpayers of California and the United States pay the cost of this medical care through the Emergency Medicaid program and, through that program, they have been saving the lives of critically ill patients who would most likely die in their own countries.

Much is said about how undocumented immigrants might be treated in the United States but rarely do we hear how the taxpayers of the United States provide them with life-saving medical procedures - procedures that these patients would not receive in their own countries.

Comments

[Bodwell]

Stunning to see the truth of this story showing up in the LA Times. Maybe the U.S. all along has been a "Caring Nation". Great article to share here. Thanks.