It’s harsh, but many deport them to their home country. The NY Times has an extensive piece detailing the practice, and how hospitals are caught in the middle of a situation with no clear guidance:
There is only limited federal financing for these fragile patients, and no governmental oversight of what happens to them. Instead, it is left to individual hospitals, many of whom see themselves as stranded at the crossroads of a failed immigration policy and a failed health care system, to cut through a thicket of financial, legal and ethical concerns.
There are some heartbreaking cases. Like this one of a 51-year old Chinese immigrant, with no family Stateside and estranged from his family in China, that places this Manhattan community hospital in a quandary:
In the case of Kong Fong Yu, in contrast, a Manhattan hospital has proceeded less decisively, keeping Mr. Yu, a stroke victim, as a boarder for 18 months now as it grapples with whether to send him back to China or to subsidize him in a nursing home indefinitely.
Related posts:
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- Treating the uninsured in New Orleans
- How hospitals should deal with disruptive physician behavior
- Luxury hospitals
- Should hospitals use Twitter to follow patients?
- When patients extort hospitals
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{ 3 comments }
As sympathetic as I am towards a hospital’s need to stay afloat, the fact of the matter is that a hospital is not an immigration agent. Any uninsured patient who is threatened with deportation, without legal recourse, should be able to block this by claiming kidnapping.
I thought you had to be held against your will be be kidnapped. Certainly, the uninsured are free to leave the hospital at any time.
In our states Medicaid program, they will pay the hospital to provide emergency care. When the patient is stable to transfer to a hospital in their own country, then payment is stopped. Does an uninsured American get any more than this in other countries? I doubt it.
I have no problem with sending them to their lawful home as soon as they are stable to transfer. China is run by the communist party which claims it is the state’s responsibility to give to each according to their need. it is for them to sort out the long term care of a Chinese citizen. Likewise with Mexico, a nation ruled by a socialist revolutionary party for nearly a hundred years.
If the options at home are not satisfactory, that is a bone they need to pick with their fellow citizens. Do other nations, morally offended at lack of universal care in the US, volunteer unrestricted amounts of their treasure to make up the gap? I think not.
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