Feds Give Public Hospitals Financial Incentives to Care for the Uninsured
By Lynn Graebner, California Healthline,
4/18/16
Eva, an undocumented immigrant and single mother in Bakersfield who harvests grapes to support her three children, suffered from daily hemorrhaging for eight months after delivering her third child. A physician at a federally-funded community clinic sent her to the hospital to get a biopsy for a uterine growth. But despite many trips to the emergency room to treat her symptoms, she was told that she would have to pay $450 before they would perform a biopsy.
Eva* explained through a translator that she became anemic, making it difficult at times to walk, work and care for her children. The bleeding has now stopped but she gets sick often, and because she can’t pay the hospital fee, she lives with the fear that her tumor could be malignant.
Stories like Eva’s are all too common, said Josth Stenner, a co-chair of the Health for Kern Coalition, part of the Building Healthy Communities South Kern community initiative. Undocumented immigrants in Kern County who go to federally-funded community clinics often wait up to three months to see a doctor or wait and go to the emergency room when their condition worsens, he said.
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/cap...llegal-aliens/
