This community is thinking of a tax to pay for on-call specialists to cover the ER. How has it come down to this? One reason is a possible illegal immigrant malpractice scam – that’s the first I’ve heard of this:
Doctors are tired of answering calls to care for indigent or Medicaid patients for which they will receive only token payment, if any, only to expose themselves to a malpractice lawsuit a year later by a patient who ignored the follow-up medical instructions and then encountered complications. The problem is exacerbated by a high caseload of illegal immigrants, who may return to their native country and be recruited by a growing litigation industry able to reach across international borders to ensnare American doctors in phony malpractice suits.
Related posts:
- Immigration and health care
- 47 million uninsured
- The hurdles impeding universal health care
- Health services to illegal immigrants
- HIPAA vs the public good
- Discharge instructions
- Culturally sensitive mental health care
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The malpractice angle here is a small part of the article. The really juicy part is how the local hospital found it could not compel physicians to take ER call as a condition of privileging. The crisis merely points out hwo people will ultimately vote with their feet. No pay, no service.
No pay, no service. Works everywhere else.
Why can’t a Congress write a bill that makes it illegal for an illegal alien to seek redress in an American court at any level? An illegal alien, which includes persons who are or were in the country without a visa or were in violation of a visa, should themselves be subject to prosecution, criminal prosecution. They deserve no redress in U.S. courts at all.
Lawyers who solicit their business deserve disbarment for conspiracy, if even after-the-fact.
Of course, repealing EMTALA is what is really needed.
I am being sued by an illegal alien who suffered because of her own negligence. She was referred to a scumbag lawyer firm by the Mexican Consulate.
Kevin, are you even serious with this illegal malpractice scam stuff?
Since the Mexican government openly aids and encourages it’s citizen’s immigration into the US against US law and for their own finacial benefit, it seems to be that hospitals, state prisons systems, local school districts, and others that have a cost created by these illegal Mexicans have a legitimate claim against the Mexican government and should sue for damages.
Anyone familiar with a scam whereby patients operated on in a US hospital go across the border and have surgical foreign bodies (surgical sponges for example) placed in their incisions or abdomen then return to sue the hospital and doctors where the original surgery was performed? I have been told this has occurred in some of the border states (Texas, Az, NM).
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