While you wait

[docorion]

Examiner.com is apparently going through a major redesign/rework of their web presence. One of the effects this has had is to delay things being published. Apparently especially "first articles", I guess. The article I wrote to prove I was planning to has not yet appeared; the one I wrote second has. Find me at Read more... )

Comments

[moechus]

As you know, I'm always interested in immigration issues, like how much illegals are using (or not using) our health care system. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a right-wing talk radio show (Jay Severin I think) and a caller told of a recent visit to the ER where she was the only person there who wasn't an illegal immigrant. Her evidence that everyone else was illegal? They were speaking foreign languages. My own impression (which you affirmed a year or two back) is that illegals are scared shitless that any contact with officialdom (including the ER) could lead to deportation and that they therefore avoid going to the ER until long after they should have gone (with negative public health consequences).

Apropos this subject, a friend of mine (who is an immigration policy wonk) posted this awhile back as a comment on my FB page: "Most folks who bitch about "anchor babies" cite statistics that purport to show that some welfare hospital in a border state (like California or Arizona) has some shockingly high percentage of births to mothers wh...o are here illegally. But in fact (the US Commission on Immigration Reform [chaired by Barbara Jordan; my friend was a Commission staffer] heard testimony about this in 1993), what really happens is that those hospitals which are required to take mothers in labor who don't have insurance (which is why this happens in welfare hospitals) simply refuse to ask for SSNs when the mom doesn't have insurance. That way they get reimbursed faster." I believe my friend but don't see why not asking for SSNs should lead to faster reimbursement. Maybe there's an article there.