WATCHING LOS ANGELES' COUNTY HEALTH SYSTEM MELT DOWN
January 29, 2002 (2003 update follows)
In 1993, I wrote that Hillary Clinton's national health care plan lacked a very important point. Who would be entitled to such care? The use of the words "all Americans" did not specify that illegal aliens and legal resident aliens were NOT Americans. I wrote at the time that the breakdown was due to the unprecedented massive flow of illegal aliens to Los Angeles.
Remember when liberals tried to convince us all that to deprive illegal aliens of health benefits (Prop 187), it would result in the government withholding billions of dollars in federal funds. I predicted that this political blackmail by liberals to thwart Prop 187 was naive. After 187 won, not only was the liberals prediction wrong, but the opposite occurred.
In 1995, the Los Angeles County Health System was on the verge of bankruptcy. No major news media ever included in their columns at the time, nor do they now, what was causing the health system breakdown. In the September 14, 1995, issue of the L.A. Times it said that the L.A. County Board of Supervisors were in trouble with the county's health system and they were on their knees for a federal bailout. The Times article said further that "federal authorities are adamant that no federal funds be used for most non-emergency treatment of illegal immigrants--a sticking point for county officials."
But the county officials were so determined to continue to provide free services to people who have entered the U.S. illegally, that they poo-pooed the Feds about the risk of losing federal funds and the health risk of legal U.S. residents -- but the feds bailed them out anyway. That 1995 Federal bailout was the first of two, the last one in 2000. New the county supervisors need another bailout. But neither California nor the Feds are up to it.
How am I able to make such accurate predictions? Easy, I just do third grade arithmetic -- something our politicians and bureaucrats don't want to do because THEY JUST DON'T GET IT!
Hal Netkin
UPDATE_________________
Well, here we are again. It's July, 2003. California is in a $38 billion meltdown and L.A. County's financial dependence on the state has rendered it also a in meltdown condition. It's not an economy problem. In spite of the recent dot.com crash, California's tax revenues under Governor Davis' watch have hit record highs. So it must be a spending problem. How much of the spending goes for services and health care for illegal aliens is not really know because no politician wants to touch the issue and the bean counters say they don't know either.
What we have is intentional blindness.
But occasionally a piece of the picture is revealed, as in 1994 when the voters had to decide on Proposition 187. Among other things, that Proposition would have denied illegal aliens elementary and secondary education in government schools. Because the state Legislative Analyst is required to tell the voters the fiscal impact of every Proposition on the ballot, the states' taxpayers learned that they were paying $1.2 billion annually to give illegal aliens elementary and secondary education in government schools. Then Governor Pete Wilson's office did a study that put the figure at $1.5 billion. A United States Government Accounting Office analysis around that same time basically supported Governor Wilson's higher figure. Nine years and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of additional illegal aliens later, we only can guess at the present cost.
In addition to the cost of providing illegal aliens with elementary and secondary education, what are the costs to California taxpayers from the following?
Providing medical care at government hospitals and trauma centers, especially non-emergency medical care, to illegal aliens. (Los Angeles County voters recently approved an increase in their property taxes to pay for County trauma centers. Government officials failed to tell the voters what scattered news stories have revealed for years: just like private hospitals, public hospitals and trauma centers are overrun by illegal aliens who use these facilities for primary, non-emergency health care. For example, on September 24, 2002, the Washington Times reported on the fate of several private hospitals that have an idea of what is happening at public hospitals: The Regional Medical Center Hospital and Pioneers Memorial Hospital, both in El Centro, Calif., lost more than $1.5 million last year in their treatment of illegal immigrants. Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego was forced to close after losing more than $5 million a year in unreimbursed medical care, much of it for illegal immigrants.)
Other state expenses include:
-- Building additional hospitals and other medical facilities to treat illegal aliens.
-- Allowing illegal aliens to attend other government schools like colleges and universities, especially when they receive in-state tuition rates.
-- Building additional schools and colleges to educate illegal aliens.
-- Expending law enforcement and court resources on traffic accidents caused by illegal immigrants.
-- Building extra infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports and mass transit systems, etc., to accommodate illegal aliens.
-- Incarcerating illegal aliens in jails and prisons.
-- Building additional jails and prisons to incarcerate illegal aliens.
--Expending law enforcement and court resources on illegal aliens who violate non-immigration-related criminal laws.
--Building additional courts and law enforcement facilities to handle the illegal aliens who violate non-immigration-related criminal laws.
--Welfare, food, housing subsidies or other similar benefits provided to illegal aliens who obtain it by fraud or otherwise.
--Providing education, food, law enforcement and court services, etc., to the minor children of illegal aliens who automatically become American citizens upon their birth in America.
If the cost of illegal immigration is not dealt with, it will be interesting to see if the problem can be fixed at all.
Part of the information above is from an editorial written by Attorney Allan Favish
