His came from Yahoo.News...
Hospital leaders told
The New York Times they're wary of terms in the health care reform law that
will eventually halve the amount of money they receive for caring for uninsured
people without addressing the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the
country, most of them lacking insurance.
Emergency rooms are required to take in all
patients, insured or uninsured, under a federal law signed by President Ronald
Reagan. The government used a pot of about $20 billion to reimburse hospitals
each year for this care. But that pot is going to be cut in half by 2019, under
the reasoning that the health care law will dramatically cut the number of
people who don't have insurance, thus saving hospitals money. The calculation
leaves out one key group of uninsured people: illegal immigrants, who will not
be required to buy health insurance or be eligible for Medicaid, or be allowed
to purchase insurance on state-run exchanges under the law.
Earlier proposals that addressed illegal
immigrants were scrapped during the health care debate after they drew
controversy.
In New York City public hospitals, an
estimated 40 percent of all uninsured patients treated are undocumented, and
other hospital systems have an even larger share. Experts estimate that about 6
million of the nation's uninsured are illegal immigrants.
There is still so much to be worked out with the ACA let's hope our officials (whether appointed or elected) can do more something to help fix this. If we want to have hospitals in our neighborhood to stay open we need to address this in a reasonable fashion. If we bury our heads in the sand we will look up someday when it is too late.
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