G Sharp

Interesting article on the American healthcare system and illegal aliens.


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Tough questions about Jesica's transplants

by Michelle Malkin

No one can deny that the plight of Jesica Santillan, the sick teenager who mistakenly received organs at Duke University from a donor with a different blood type, is a sad one.

But we cannot ignore the tough public policy questions in Jesica's case that the sob-story writers at the New York Times prefer to paper over:

When resources are scarce, as the supply of voluntarily donated organs notoriously are, why shouldn't U.S. citizens get top priority?

According to national figures, 16 patients die in the U.S. each day while waiting for a potentially life-saving transplant operation. How many American patients currently on the national organ waiting list were denied access to healthy hearts and lungs as a result of Santillan's two transplant surgeries? Who will tell their stories?

Finally, if Jesica recovers from the second heart-lung transplant, will any federal immigration authority have the guts to enforce the law and send her and her family back home to Mexico?

According to Times reporter Denise Grady, "Ms. Santillan's family moved from Mexico to North Carolina three years ago in hopes that she could be treated at Duke for restrictive cardiomyopathy, which caused an enlarged, weakened heart and damaged lungs."


But as other media outlets have more accurately and honestly detailed, Santillan's family didn't just "move" here. They came here illegally by paying a coyote $5,000 to smuggle Santillan and her mother across the border for the express purpose of obtaining medical care and circumventing long wait times in Mexico.


A North Carolina businessman, Mack Mahoney, founded a private charity to raise funds for Santillan's transplants. But the charity cannot replace the organs that were used in Santillan's surgeries. Those hearts and lungs are not fungible.


In all likelihood, taxpayers will be on the hook for Santillan's post-operative care one way or another. Transplant patients must take immunosuppressant medications for the life of the transplanted organs, for example. Typical costs of post-transplant drugs may be as much as $2,500 per month in the first year alone. And as we all know, Santillan's botched operation was far from typical. Her illegal immigrant parents will probably sue Duke University, adding further to this case's surgery-related costs.


The United Network for Organ Sharing, the non-profit group that coordinates the nation's transplant system, has established a policy that no more than 5 percent of the organs transplanted at any hospital are allowed to go to illegal immigrants or foreign nationals. But when medical facilities have tried to deny organ transplants to illegal aliens, they have been met with a political and media uproar. Last summer, for example, the Cleveland Clinic was pressured by a local Hispanic city councilman into admitting an illegal immigrant from Guatemala for a liver transplant after initially turning her away.


The costs of illegal alien health care are crippling hospitals across the country. In North Carolina, where Santillan's family has settled, a Medicaid emergency services program averages 221 new cases every month involving immigrants, many of them illegal, at a cost of about $32 million. As the Washington Times reported recently, dozens of hospitals in the 28 counties along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have either closed their doors or face bankruptcy because of losses caused by uncompensated care given to illegal immigrants.


Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego was forced to close after losing more than $5 million a year in unreimbursed medical care, much of it for illegal immigrants, Times reporter Jerry Seper noted. The Southeast Medical Center in Douglas, Ariz., is on the verge of bankruptcy because of uncompensated care to undocumented aliens; the Cochise County, Ariz., Health Department spends as much as 30 percent of its annual $9 million budget on undocumented aliens; and the University Medical Center in Tucson will spend up to $10 million this year providing uncompensated alien health care.


New York medical providers have peformed dozens of organ-transplant operations - and even sex-change operations-- to illegal aliens. The costs of such "charity" care typically are shifted to insured patients, resulting in higher health insurance premiums.


In a world of scarce resources, compassion must have limits. We cannot afford to be a medical welcome mat to the world.

Mr.Fiction

That article is just a right wing propaganda piece. I have no idea who the author is, but I guarantee, without any doubt or research that she is some right wing idiot.

All the buzz words, sources that are known to lie, and the same old enemies. I'm sure her position is that it's ok to spend one trillion dollars on war because we must "help the people of Iraq", but at the same time we should let some little girl die because we need to save the transplant money for white people.

Boring hypocritical propaganda.

jas1552

People are sick and dying all over the world. We can't pay for them all but that's just common sense. Of course Americans should come first in american hospitals.

High Quality

The fact of the matter is that the entire socialist attitude toward organ transplantation (i.e. "need before greed") has created a system where the supply is pathetically small in comparison to demand. If someone was paid a large sum of money to their family upon death for the value of their organs, do you not think that a helluva lot more people would donate? Its simple economics folks.

The US government and its socialism has created the problem. Thats a fact.

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jas1552

If you have a limited amount of food and money who would you feed first? Your family or the neighbors?

MuleScrote

It's not a question of nationality...it's about humanity and the desire to save and sustain life. If someone from another country is in one of our hospitals in need of an emergency transplant, and organs become available in the area....are we supposed to tell them "Sorry, we didn't invite you here. You are going to die."

The sad part of this whole fuck up is the fact that organs that could have helped a child of the correct blood type were wasted. Hopefully, this girl will be ok now.

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BigFish

yeah you're right. im sure the parents were planning on paying for the whole procedure themselves. I am also sure that the whole family was covered by some kind of health insurance somehow. The nerve of that writer spreading propaganda! I mean, who does that writer think she is saying that there are desperate Americans waiting for life/death organ donations everyday?? I bet you there's none!

G Sharp

jas1552

If there is an American in need of a transplant and could use the same organs it should go to the American every single time. If the foreigner is the only one who could accept the organ of course you give them the transplant. It's not about punishing the illegal. It's about feeding your family before you feed the neighbors.

Matt 26z

Two American's are in fact going to now die because of this girl. What about them? Maybe Mexico should send us two organs to make up for this.

And if human life is human life, maybe we should just open the borders to all transplant patients from around the world. Then few American's would actually get them in their own country. How about that?

MuleScrote

You would have to look at the details in every case. Every family that has a loved one on the waiting list will always ask "How come I didn't get it?" or "Why should we help that guy first?".

I'll ask you this way....

An illegal and an American are both waiting for the same organs. The illegal is expected to live another 48 hrs without a transplant. The American has been given 2 weeks to live. Who gets the organs? The illegal?...do we let an American die because we gambled on the chace that more organs would come available in the next two weeks?

Also...why are the organs needed? By that I mean what is the medical problem. Who would benefit most? Some degenerative diseases can only be temporarily slowed by transplants. Don't you have to take that into consideration?

I don't care if these transplants go to illegals or Americans...they are all PEOPLE. Sorry, that's just the way I see it.

But you can't just toss the organs into the first person that comes up. You gotta ask...

Who has the most immediate need?
Who will benefit the most?
How often does this blood type become available?
What are the chance this person will live a long healthy life if treated?

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Mr.Fiction

Hilarious thread.

jas1552

This thread is not hilarious. That's left wing propaganda.

Mr.Fiction

Speaking of propaganda, I did a search on the author of the above joke article. She is owned and operated by Fox. Are you shocked?

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/...y-c-11-13.html

FlyingIguana

take care of your own first.

jas1552

Good points. I was wrong when I said the american should get the organs EVERY time. It should be a strong factor among the other factors though. I mean if a mexican needs a transplant and could live a long healthy life with one, the american is gonna die regardless from a degenerative disease and the blood type is rare then perhaps the mexican should get the transplant. In such a situation the American would be very low on the list anyway.
In your hypothetical it should go to the American assuming all is equal except the estimated survival time.

jas1552

Dude, even if the author is a card carrying republican using this as propaganda it still raises valid questions.

G Sharp

Good point. No ideological position owns a monopoly on the truth.

lightswitch

Its all about Universal Heath care!

How many of us have insurance?

cold_ice

I think she will be a little slow now, permant brain damagenis what I heard on the news.