Immigration Debate Hits Home for Liver Transplant Patients
| AR Articles on Immigration Law |
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| The Green Card Crap Shoot (May 2003) |
| Fade to Brown (May 2003) |
| A Chronicle of Capitulation (Aug. 2002) |
| Immigration: The Debate Becomes Interesting (Jul. 1995) |
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Ana Puente was an infant with a liver disorder when her aunt brought her illegally to the U.S. to seek medical care. She underwent two liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state.
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This year, her liver began failing again and she was hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center. In her Medi-Cal application, a USC doctor wrote, “Her current clinical course is irreversible, progressive and will lead to death without another liver transplant.” The application was denied.
The county gave her medication but does not have the resources to perform transplants.
Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full Medi-Cal coverage. Puente did so, her benefits were restored and she is now awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.
Puente’s case highlights two controversial issues: Should illegal immigrants receive liver transplants in the U.S. and should taxpayers pick up the cost?
The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, and anti-rejection medications can run more than $30,000 annually, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide.
Donor livers are also in scarce supply. In California, nearly 3,700 people are on a waiting list for livers, according to the network. Last year, 767 liver transplants were performed in the state. More than 90% of the organs were given to U.S. citizens.
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Immigration status does not play a role in allocating organs.
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“All transplants are about rationing,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. “I just don’t think the public ought to be funding any kind of benefits for people who are breaking the law.”
Larry Gonzalez, a U.S. citizen who has hepatitis C, has known for a decade that he needs a new liver but was just placed on the transplant waiting list last week.
“Why do we have to get in line behind immigrants, foreigners, when we have enough people here to fill the hospitals?” asked Gonzalez, 54, who lives in Ventura. “It just seems obvious to me that we shouldn’t be taking a back seat.”
But Dr. Michael Shapiro, vice chairman of the ethics committee for the organ network, said illegal immigrants have just as much right to organ transplants as U.S. citizens. He said it is likely that more illegal immigrants donate organs than receive them.
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Holes in the safety net
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If illegal immigrants inform the state in writing that U.S. immigration services “is aware of their presence and does not plan to deport them,” they could be eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal, said Norman Williams, spokesman for the state health department. Medical condition is one factor that would make immigrants eligible for coverage.
The immigrants send a form to Citizenship and Immigration Services, but the agency said it does not respond to patients or make any promises about their immigration status.
Looking to the future
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The larger problem, [Dr. Sue V. McDiarmid, medical director of UCLA’s pediatric liver transplant program] said, is that the state healthcare system cuts off illegal immigrants who were covered as children. “We took care of those undocumented children because we thought, and the state thought, that it was the right thing to do,” she said. “Why would we as a society then turn our backs on them?”
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Repeat transplants, which are not uncommon, can be necessary if the patients’ bodies reject the livers at the time of the transplant or while they are on medication, or if the transplant livers develop hepatitis C, Stolz said.
Jose Lopez said he came to the U.S. with his mother illegally as a child. Soon after, he contracted hepatitis A and received his first liver transplant. Eight years later, he got cirrhosis and received another transplant.
Both were performed at UCLA and paid for by the state.
As his 21st birthday approached, his mother, Maria Elena Lopez, searched for clinics that might agree to treat her son. She applied for Medi-Cal for him but has not received a response.
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About a month later, his mother found the Roybal clinic, which provided Lopez with medication and monitored his care. Though his drugs never lapsed, his liver is still in rejection.
“I’m just mad,” he said from the Los Angeles apartment he shares with his parents. “You can’t just leave a person to die. That’s pretty much what they’re telling me: ‘You’re illegally here. We’re just gonna let you die.’ “
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A question of ethics
Medical ethicists said doctors and hospitals have a duty to continue treatment for their transplant patients unless they can find them comparable care elsewhere.
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Caplan said UCLA doctors were under no obligation to perform liver transplants on the illegal immigrant children knowing that their insurance would run out at 21 and that their livers would probably need to be replaced.
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Email Anna Gorman at anna.gorman@latimes.com.
(Posted on April 17, 2008)
Comments
Everytime I have visited the U.S., for business or for pleasure, I have arranged beforehand for private medical coverage in the event I’m in an accident. I have no intention of sticking the cost of paying my medical bills to American taxpayers. And given the horrendous state of the Canadian health care system, I couldn’t expect my nation to cover me (or even if I got sick IN Canada - that’s what socialized medicine leads to - no care at all!).
I wish non-Americans would face the facts. Being in the United States is a privilege, not a right, for all non-Americans. And being privileged enough to enter the United States (legally!) means that you pay your fair share of taxes when required, cover your own expenses, don’t soak up government largesse, and obey the laws and respect the local ways. It’s all about being sensible and courteous. With such common sense, I guess I have no shot at making it in politics, do I?
Posted by Matt at 6:44 PM on April 17
But Dr. Michael Shapiro, vice chairman of the ethics committee for the organ network, said illegal immigrants have just as much right to organ transplants as U.S. citizens……..Yes Doctor Shapiro, another good reason for me not to fill out that organ donor card.
Posted by Tony Soprano at 7:05 PM on April 17
“…She underwent two liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state…”
This is THE single most infuriating thing I have read this month—if not the entire year.
I will be a cold day in hell before an illegal alien, prison inmate—or any non-White for that matter receives an organ from me or one of my loved ones. I have instructed my family members that my organs are not to be transplanted.
Believe me, I wouldn’t hesitate to let my wishes be known to a transplant committee—even if they had to taser me to shut me up.
I’m wondering if a day will come when one won’t have a say in whether his loved ones’ organs are transplanted or not.
According to Michelle Malkin:
“…When resources are scarce, as the supply of voluntarily donated organs notoriously are, why shouldn’t U.S. citizens get top priority?
According to national figures, 16 patients die in the U.S. each day while waiting for a potentially life-saving transplant operation. How many American patients currently on the national organ waiting list were denied access to healthy hearts and lungs as a result of Santillan’s (an illegal alien) two transplant surgeries? Who will tell their stories?…”
http://www.vdare.com/malkin/welcome_mat.htm
Did you know that Affirmative Action is now being used to allocate scarce organs?
“…The United Network for Organ Sharing says that ‘justice refers to allocation of organs to those patients in the most need’…. they are surreptitiously redesigning the organ allocation system in order to increase the number of blacks who receive transplants…”
http://www.amren.com/news/news04/02/17/transplants.html
And lastly, this:
“…Finding African-American organ donors is a critical problem. Nationwide, blacks make up more than 30 percent of all organ donor recipients but only 20 percent of all donors…”
‘They have one of the highest needs for transplants but one of the lowest percentage of donors’ said Joseph Roth, president and CEO of the Sharing Network, an organ and tissues service that matches donors to patients. Roth said that only 34 percent of eligible blacks in New Jersey consented to donate their organs, as opposed to 63 percent of eligible whites and 59 percent of eligible Hispanics…”
According to Paved With Good Intentions, blacks will not donate organs because they are afraid Whites will receive them.
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 8:19 PM on April 17
how many law-abiding citizens die because an illegal alien got the organ that should have gone to them?
Posted by dmz at 8:46 PM on April 17
This is actually an issue where I side with the doctors. And I am one of the most rabid anti-immigrant types there is. I’m also a hispanic AND a doctor.
The problem is we take the oath. Being a doctor isn’t like being a plumber or being the CEO of a company. It’s more like being a minister. It’s a job but it’s also a calling….with STRICT moral and ethical obligations. You MUST treat patients, if they need it badly enough. To refuse violates the oath. You violate your oath and you aren’t a doctor. It’s as simple as that. Everything comes second and that includes nation and it includes community.
I agree, it is not fair that someone from another country takes an organ that should go to someone from our country. So keep the illegals out. You cannot expect the doctor to refuse them once they are here. He can’t do that.
Posted by at 8:57 PM on April 17
What happens to a citizen or legal immigrant without medical insurance? What if my daughter (God forbid!) had to have an expensive medical procedure and we did not have insurance? I hate to even ask those sorts of questions.
Posted by Spartan24 at 9:05 PM on April 17
It’s obvious to note here that this is no longer a case of wasting the taxpayer’s money. It passed the border of being genocidal to the native people of the country. Now the citizens of America has to share their bodies and organs with the foreign invaders! This is a crime against humanity and nature and reason itself. God will not allow all the leftists today go unpunished. This is sacrilege, it’s no longer just annoying.
Posted by at 12:03 AM on April 18
The crux of the argument here is that American citizens that need liver transplants lose out to foreigners. The doctors in the article suggest that others are just as deserving as American citizens who are waiting for a life saving organ. Well, I think this view is immoral for several reasons. Did the doctors in training receive financial grants to go to medical school. If they did, it was paid for by the Americans they now put on a level with people who never contributed to their education. Is the hospital that they operate in paid for by American taxpayers in any way? Again, the obviousness of considering citizens first. Dozens of other examples are possible.
Posted by Bobby at 1:25 AM on April 18
All ethics and humanitarianism aside, this whole debate stinks.
A legal alien would be categorically denied any of these considerations yet a self confessed illegal and family gets unlimited consideration.
Let me explain. Someone who applied for an immigrant visa (a potential legal immigrant) would be subject to a full medical before admission. Any pre-existing medical condition that required long term medical care would essentially exclude them from entering the U.S as an immigrant.
This bias in favor of illegal immigrants extends to every facet of the U.S welfare system.
Legal aliens in the U.S whether they be tourists or immigrants are subject to social and legal contracts barring them by civil and criminal law from benefitting from any social programs such as WIC, welfare, SS, Section 8, medicare, medicade, medi anything. And quite rightly so.
However, ILLEGALS entered with no agreements and therefore are not bound by any contracts and are therefore elligable for anything and everything.
Another unavoidable cost of open borders. No checkpoint, no questions, no contract. Legally speaking they do not have an obligation to obey any of our laws… It’s a cultural thing.
Posted by at 3:42 AM on April 18
I used to give regularly to charity, especially the United Way.
Then I found out that my local United Way was up at the state capitol every legislative session, arguing for in-state tuition for illegals. I no longer give them a dime.
Since as long as I can remember I have checked that organ donation box on my driver’s license. If this becomes an accepted thing I will no longer do that, either. When my driver’s license comes up for renewal I will have it removed.
Nothing has destroyed my confidence in charity the way illegal immigration has. Now I have one and only one charity - my own future family and children.
Posted by Alan at 6:21 AM on April 18
“Let me explain. Someone who applied for an immigrant visa (a potential legal immigrant) would be subject to a full medical before admission. Any pre-existing medical condition that required long term medical care would essentially exclude them from entering the U.S as an immigrant…”
Posted by at 3:42 AM on April 18
You are absolutely right! My husband, our two young daughters and I arrived in America from Canada in 1984. We all received complete physicals as well as criminal background checks, finger prints, what I call “mug shots,” interviews, etc. We had to prove that my husband would be an asset in his line of work, we were skilled, English-speaking and that we would never need assistance from the government. In other words, we underwent vigorous steps over a number of years in order to become “Permanent Resident Aliens” but more importantly, we were honored and proud to jump these logical hoops in order to become productive members of this great nation!
Once we completed all of the jumping, we were ushered into a huge auditorium filled with “Green Card potentials” to hear a few speeches, and we were quite shocked to see that we were the only “Anglos” in the room! And that’s no joke!
Anyway, as a law-abiding, tax-paying, proud to be in America Permanent Resident Alien, I am disgusted with the outrageous “preferential treatment” these illegal aliens from south of the border receive! It’s no wonder that crime is rampant, diseases which we had eradicated decades ago are thriving, and our general quality of life is sliding down the river.
Illegal immigration is destroying our beautiful country, and I am so happy to see more and more of us standing up for what is right!
There is a right way to enter this country, and there is a wrong way to enter this country. Legal immigrants who show respect for America’s laws and sovereignty, who are self-sufficient and happy to assimilate realize that it is a darn privilege to become members of America. Illegal aliens are not legal immigrants and do not share the same respect for and loyalty to America. Illegal aliens are not here to share the American dream; rather, they are here to steal the American dream and turn it into what’s best for Mexico.
On another note, America is so generous that we’re now becoming dreadfully over-populated… I am grateful that we arrived here when we did, but I have to be honest. In my opinion, we need to eliminate all illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration to sensible levels if we are to continue enjoying the beauty and wealth of this country.
A Canadian proud to be an American!
Posted by Jackers at 10:47 AM on April 18
The larger problem, [Dr. Sue V. McDiarmid, medical director of UCLA’s pediatric liver transplant program] said, is that the state healthcare system cuts off illegal immigrants who were covered as children. “We took care of those undocumented children because we thought, and the state thought, that it was the right thing to do,” she said. “Why would we as a society then turn our backs on them?”
Because they are ADULTS no and can return to their home country for treatment. Mexico has hospitals, let them go to their own doctors and hospitals.
Posted by Gun Runner at 11:46 AM on April 18
“This is a crime against humanity and nature and reason itself.”
Sounds like Christianity.
The last shall be first.
The needs of others come before self.
Don’t be selfish.
Sacrifice is sacred.
Aren’t we in the middle of an orgy of self-sacrifice? Is this not Christian joy, or what?
Posted by TabuLa Raza at 3:01 PM on April 18
“TabuLaRaza” may have a good point: What if the Christian belief system has been “overtaken by events,” i.e. has become obsolete? After all, a behavior that contributes to an organism’s death by definition kills the host.
Posted by Wild Eyed Charlie at 3:40 PM on April 18
Where did Dr. Shapiro get his law degree? And is the U.S. the only country that liver transplants are done?
Posted by Frank at 9:45 PM on April 18
This business of letting all illegals in, regardless of who they are, is offensive to every single citizen who is descended from families who had to wait until their own families were back together again in cases of illness. In some of those cases, the families were NEVER back together. I’m speaking of the families at Ellis Island who had family members who were denied adnittance to the US because of disease or other unfitness. Even after the disease was cured, there was no money to come back across the Atlantic Ocean and try again. There are very few comparisons between people wanting to emigrate today, and the few who made it here back in the day.
Posted by at 2:08 AM on April 19
The problem is we take the oath.
Most doctors (and nurses) these days care absolutely nothing about their Hippocratic oath. They are a bunch of money-grubbing prostitutes who will do absolutely anything for a buck.
How many doctors will refer women for non-medically necessary abortions? Just about all of you. How many nurses will draw blood from DUI suspects to be used as evidence against them? Just about all of them. If these things are not violations of the Hippocratic oath, then what is, doctor?
So much for your Hippocratic oaths.
Posted by qwerty at 2:28 PM on April 19
Wake up folks, this happens all the time with all organs. I am an anesthesiologist at a major medical center. Several years ago a middle aged woman from India come over on a tourist visa. The problem was that she had chronic kidney failure and had be on dialysis for years(requiring dialysis three times a week in order to survive). When she arrived here she came to the hospital and was immediately put on dialysis and on the organ donor list. Not too long after she received a kidney transplant—-all on the hospital and/or the US tax payer. Illegals know that if they come here we are required by law to treat them if their conditions are life threatning—so if you need a new kidney or liver or heart all you have to do is make it across the border and you will get the best medical care that money, US tax payer money, can buy. It is a scam that has been going on for many years now. The way to stop it is not to allow persons who are likely to abuse the system in the country. Remember that every one of these illegal recipients takes organs that could save your or your loved one’s life and decreases your chances of receiving one, aside from the money that is being taken out of your pocket.
Posted by at 5:32 PM on April 19
I wouldn’t object so strongly to this, as long as all the participants worked for free. Let’s see how many transplants Dr Shapiro want to do on his own time. If he won’t do it for free, then any claim of Hippocratic obligation is a lie.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 8:30 PM on April 21
> You MUST treat patients, if they need it badly enough. To refuse violates the oath.
I have been refused medical treatment in So. Calif. because I intended to pay my own way, of which I believe I was quite capable, in this case.
The physician in question (an orthopedic surgeon in Riverside County) only accepts payment from 3rd parties (so-called “insurance” companies), not from patients themselves.
At least, that is what his telephone receptionist told me.
Posted by Zeichner at 1:02 AM on May 1