California Hospitals Slammed As Illegal Immigration Costs Soar
Authored by Brad Jones and John Fredricks via The Epoch Times
Some hospitals in Southern California are struggling with an influx of illegal immigrants amid the border crisis, while American patients are enduring longer wait times for doctor appointments due to a nursing shortage in the state, according to two health care professionals.
A health care worker at a hospital in Southern California, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job, told sources that “the entire health care system is just being bombarded” by a steady stream of illegal migrants in recent years.
Some migrants get hurt crossing the desert or injured climbing the border wall, while others are injured in accidents, especially when too many occupants are packed into one vehicle, said the health care worker.
Severely injured illegal migrants are often rescued by helicopters and flown to trauma centres in Southern California, she said.
“They’re falling off the wall,” she said. “They’re always flowing. They’re never put in the back of an ambulance.”
With a typical helicopter rescue costing around $30,000, without factoring in the costs of medication and medical staff at the hospitals, “who pays for that?” she asked.
“Our health care system is so overwhelmed, and then add on top of that tuberculosis, COVID-19, and other diseases from all over the world,” she said.
Total U.S. apprehensions of illegal and inadmissible aliens in fiscal year 2023—from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023—were 3.2 million. In fiscal year 2022, it was more than 2.7 million. Counting “known gotaways”—those who Border Patrol agents record but don’t catch—more than 8 million illegal immigrants have entered the country in less than three years under the Biden administration.
Illegal migrant patients are usually accompanied by their sponsors, who advocate for them, but language barriers still pose a problem for doctors and other hospital staff, said the health care worker.
“Not everybody can speak the languages of these patients,” she said. “That’s another burden.”
Hospitals need to hire either translators or staff that can speak all the languages of the patients crossing the border from dozens of different countries, she said.
“Of course, there’s nothing wrong with learning another language or having people that can accommodate their health care,” she said. “Nobody wants to see somebody in pain or hurting in need of medicine. But, at the same time, it’s at the expense of others.”
The “others,” she said, are American patients as well as taxpayers who are ultimately footing the bill.
Patients often have their doctor’s appointments “pushed back,” to accommodate the medical needs of illegal migrants, the health care worker said.
“They get in a lot quicker than our Veterans Affairs [VA] and retired military patients. They get in a lot faster, and they get the best care—probably better care than the VA patients do,” she said.
Typically, VA patients usually wait months to be seen by a specialist while illegal migrants who just crossed the border are seen the same week, she said.
“I’ve seen that firsthand,” she said. “We hear it from VA patients all day, every day.”
When Border Patrol agents bring patients to the hospitals, there is an “air of secrecy” that follows them.
“No one is allowed to talk to the media or public about why they are there or how they got there,” she said. “We keep them in this bubble of protection, which is the wrong approach. We should let the public know.”
The government is using “patient privacy” as a shield to hide what they’re doing.
“Patient privacy is a priority in the health care field, but when it comes to illegals, it’s branching off into elitism or a protected class,” she said.
