MS Maze

A small part of the health reform ‘debate’ focuses on illegal immigrants and conservatives’ desire to keep them from receiving public sponsored health care in our nation’s hospital emergency rooms. Today — right now — hospital emergency rooms have a mandate to respond to any life threatening injury or illness that comes through their doors. They need not treat injuries that are less than life threatening, but they DO have to screen you in order to make that determination.

I’ve listened while critics charge that Democrats refuse to add language to any of the bill drafts that would plainly state ‘no illegals covered.’ Folks, that’s a good thing and it is my hope that those drafting the bills stick to their guns and continue to refuse to add such draconian language. Even the slightly observant must realize what will happen when poorly trained or overworked personnel start refusing care to people who are unable, for any of a multitude of reasons, to prove their citizenship when faced with a life or death health crisis.

Ask yourself — do you carry concrete proof of citizenship with you at all times? If so, are you absolutely certain that you’ll have it with you when that heart attack hits? What’s going to happen when you’re wheeled into the emergency room if you’re unable to speak and/or can’t prove your citizenship? Will the ambulance personnel even take you to the hospital without such proof?

The answer is that there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to die.

What happens if you’re from another country and that you’re simply visiting America? “Oh, those are visitiors. Of course we’ll take care of them,” you say. Really? Can you tell the difference between a citizen, a visitor, and an illegal when you’re pulling their unconscious body out of a smashed rental car or standing over them when they’ve passed out in the supermarket checkout lane? Really — can you?

Since there is, short of a passport, no absolute physical proof of US citizenship of which I’m aware, adding language that says ‘no illegals covered’ places us a mere hop, skip, and jump away from passage of another bill mandating a national identification card. All you folks who are riled up at big government and its growing role in your life are just going to love being forced to carry that card. Really — you will, because government, with the help of some good ad agencies, country singers, sports figures, and race car drivers will make you believe in it. They’ll make it so you just can’t wait until you’re able to get one. You might even be able to personalize the back of it with pictures of your dog or kids. How great is that?!

I’m fairly certain that if any of us were visiting Haiti, Mexico City, Montreal, Paris, Riyadh, or Bostswana and we got deathly ill or badly injured, that we’d be taken to a local hospital and that medical personnel would do their best to help us. Don’t people who are in our country, regardless of status, deserve, at a minimum, the same modicum of humanity that we all expect to receive for EMERGENCY health care treatment in any other part of the world?

Of course they do.