http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immighealth27-2009apr27,0,3560878.story
From the Los Angeles Times
California counties cut healthcare to illegal immigrants
With budget problems afflicting counties across the
state, some have begun eliminating healthcare to illegal immigrants. Critics say
this will only shift the burden to hospital emergency rooms.
By Anna
Gorman
April 27, 2009
Forced to slash their budgets, some
California counties are eliminating nonemergency health services for illegal
immigrants -- a move that officials acknowledge could backfire by shifting the
financial burden to emergency rooms.
Sacramento County voted in February
to bar illegal immigrants from county clinics at an estimated savings of $2.4
million. Contra Costa County followed last month by cutting off undocumented
adults, to save approximately $6 million. And Yolo County is voting on a similar
change next month, which would reduce costs by $1.2 million.
"This is a
way for us to get through what I think is a horrible year for healthcare in
California," said William Walker, director of Contra Costa Health
Services.
Walker said the national ambivalence on immigration policy
means that illegal immigrants are living here but without federal or state
funding to provide essential medical services to them. Walker, who began his
medical career treating undocumented farmworkers, said that deciding to cut
their services was difficult.
"This is the community of people we have
all relied upon for decades, providing work not only in construction but in
service and child care," he said. "We all live and work here together."
Trend could spreadAs the recession continues, property
tax revenue decreases and the number of newly uninsured patients increases,
other county health departments in California and the nation may make similar
changes, said Robert Pestronk, executive director of the National Assn. of
County and City Health Officials.
"Communities are having to make
excruciating decisions about the services they fund," he said.
But
Pestronk said that shifting costs isn't the answer.
"This is a balloon
that just expands," he said. "If you squeeze it in one place, it's just going to
expand somewhere else."
John Schunhoff, Los Angeles County's interim
health services department director, said there is no plan to eliminate health
services to the county's illegal residents, despite significant projected
deficits and concern about further cuts in state funding.
Eliminating
illegal immigrants from health services may enable counties to balance their
budgets this year but won't solve the problem in the long term, said David
Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of UCLA's Center for the
Study of Latino Health and Culture.
"We are mortgaging the future to
scrape through the present," he said.
And study after study shows that
illegal immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born residents to go to the doctor
or seek regular medical care, he said.
Anti-illegal immigration activist
Barbara Coe said she was thrilled that counties are beginning to restrict
services. Coe's group, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, sponsored
Proposition 187, the initiative that tried to bar the state from providing
public services to illegal immigrants before it died in federal court.
Illegal immigrants "have absolutely no right, No. 1, to be here and, No.
2, to take the tax dollars of law-abiding American taxpayers for anything," she
said.
But the policy changes have angered immigrant rights advocates, who
argue that restrictions could also cause a chilling effect on legal residents
and U.S. citizens in mixed-status families.
"Even those people who
qualify to get care won't," said Reshma Shamasunder, director of the California
Immigrant Policy Center.
Shamasunder also said that denying healthcare
to one segment of the population puts everyone else at risk as communicable
diseases go untreated and emergency rooms become even more crowded.
Jose
Suarez, who has asthma, said he now plans to go to the hospital if he gets sick.
Suarez, 25, was born in Mexico but has been living in Contra Costa County for 10
years.
"It's unfair," he said. "We are real people. I understand they
have to cut a few things here and there, but I believe they can do
better."
Few optionsMarina Espinoza, also an illegal
immigrant in Contra Costa County, said she visits a county clinic a few times a
month to monitor her diabetes and high blood pressure so that she doesn't end up
in the hospital. Espinoza is considering returning to Mexico, where a relative
has a lead on a job with health insurance.
"None of us choose to get
sick," said Espinoza, 39. "I can't afford the medications. How can I pay for
that? It's that or rent."
Before changing its policy on illegal
immigrants, Sacramento County took several other steps to reduce healthcare
costs, including closing three of its six clinics. But that wasn't enough, said
Keith Andrews, chief of primary health services in the Department of Health and
Human Services. Andrews said he was left with a choice between firing staff or
reducing the number of patients. The county is continuing to treat everyone for
communicable diseases.
Andrews said about 4,000 people without legal
residency or citizenship were receiving healthcare in the county. Although some
are immigrants who have lived and worked in the area for years, he said, others
are foreign natives who came to the county to receive free medical treatment.
"This decision is going to impact all of our community," he said. "It's
going to create other social problems because of the impact on emergency rooms."
Seeking solutionsIn Contra Costa County, which will
continue treating undocumented children and pregnant women, community groups
mobilized against the proposal. They helped persuade county officials to
allocate additional funds to the nonprofit community clinics to help treat the
5,500 undocumented patients who will no longer be eligible for county services.
Those patients will receive primary care at the clinics, but they won't
have a place to go if they need to see a specialist, such as for cancer or heart
problems.
"It's a major gap," said Soren Tjernell of the Community Clinic
Consortium, which represents clinics in Contra Costa and Solano counties.
Yolo County's proposal, which goes before its Board of Supervisors on
May 5, would affect about 1,200 undocumented patients. Joseph Iser, who heads
the county health department, said he wished that he had another source of
revenue to continue services for illegal immigrants.
"Except by helping
us balance the budget, it doesn't help us, it doesn't help our citizens, it
doesn't help our undocumented," he said. "But if we don't have the money, we
just can't afford it."
anna.gorman@latimes.com
Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times