Continuation

I promise that soon I'll return to regularly scheduled posts such as "Pictures of The Week" and travel updates, especially updates on travel plans, but for now I am going to continue on the topic of my last post (I got rave reviews, after all). One thing I mentioned in my previous post concerning the presidential election was that, while I harbored all these feelings of anguish and frustration, finding anything that resembled evidence as to why, was difficult.

Well, quite by accident, I stumbled across two recent New York Times articles that I feel back up my anger, at least a little bit. Both articles are concerning health care in America - a hot-button issue. The first article is quite long, however I ardently urge anyone who has the time to read it to do so. For those of you who don't, I'll briefly summarize:

The article, while focusing on a few specific cases, addresses health care for immigrants within the United States. Specifically, repatriation of patients who are still very much dependent on hospital care. By repatriation I do in fact mean the sending of patients, often by ambulance, back to their home country. In one case a child (born with Down Syndrome and heart defect), born in the United States and thus legally a U.S. Citizen, was almost sent back to Mexico because of his parents Mexican drivers licenses, despite their residence in the United States for almost two years (The article does not however comment on the legality of their residence, only the citizenship of their son). Another patient was lost in an airport. The main case the article tackles is that of a 19-year old legal immigrant who, injured in a car accident, upon his parents refusal to pull the plug, was transferred, septic, from an Arizona hospital to a Mexican hospital. His parents through a church organization found a hospital in California willing to treat him pro bono, where he made a (albeit miraculous) recovery. He now walks with a slur and a cane.

The underlying issue which I'm getting at here, as is the article, is funding. Hospitals every day face intense budget crunches, and are asked to choose. Some hospitals apparently respect life more than others and do not attempt to repatriate patients who are on feeding tubes, but the fact of the matter, and the main point of my argument, is that hospitals are not provided with proper funding, specifically in the medicaid and emergency medicaid programs, to provide long term care for these patients. They are thus forced to choose. One hospital advised the parents of Antonio Torres, the focus of the article, to pull the plug - to END THEIR CHILD'S LIFE, quite simply, because the money is just not there.

Enter the second New York Times article, which I noticed a few days ago but failed to read in-full until after I had read the first this morning. This article, titled "New U.S. Rule Pares Outpatient Medicaid Services," discusses a new rule enacted by the Bush Administration 3 days after the election. The article sums up better than I can: "Alan D. Aviles, the president of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, the largest municipal health care system in the country, said: “The new rule forces us to consider reducing some outpatient services like dental and vision care. State and local government cannot pick up these costs. If anything, we expect to see additional cuts at the state level.” The Bush administration (what I was ranting about in my previous post, for those of you who forgot what my argument is), in it's push for 11th hour legislation, is cutting back medicaid services.

While a direct connection does not exist - the medicaid services cut by the Bush administration are not those concerning illegal immigrants - the connection between the two, and the fact of the matter is a blatant slap to the face for anyone willing to see it. I'll do my best to wrap it up into a nice, clear thesis statement for you: At a time where medicaid services are already stressed and stretched (see a third article commenting on the rise of patients unable to pay), as witnessed by American hospitals going to such extreme measures as repatriation to remove patients unable to pay from their hospitals, the Bush administration is cutting that very same program, and doing so at a time that is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore - directly following an election. This of course implies that they waited, calculated, and schemed the best time to enact unpopular cuts to social services.

This is the type of behavior that had me in an uproar earlier this week. The under under the table wheeling-and-dealing. The making of cuts to programs that support the most under privileged of Americans, and doing so while all the while Smiling, nodding, and saying, "Oh no! We would never do anything to harm under-privileged Americans!"

I'll leave you with some final thoughts concerning the Articles. First, that Both the Mexican and the American physicians were surprised to learn that their mutual patient, Antonio Torres, was a legal immigrant - implying that the hospital in Arizona didn't care enough to check this, or to point it out to the patients doctor; and that the Mexican physician was used to only receiving illegal immigrants as repatriated. And second, that the very same hospital advised that Antonio be removed from life support. To end his life. Simply because there wasn't money to treat him. I now refer you back to my original post, exclaiming why I was happy Obama was elected, and why I was angry with the Bush administration.