Where To Go When Your Local Emergency Room Goes Bankrupt?"

              
                              
During the past ten years  84 California hospitals have declared bankruptcy and closed down their Emergency Rooms forever.  Financially crippled by legistlative and judicial mandates to treat illegal aliens have bankrupted hospitals!   In 2010, in Los Angeles County alone, over 2 million illegal aliens recorded visits to county emergency rooms for both routine and emergency care.  Per official figures, the cost is $1,000 dollars for every taxpayer in Los Angeles County.   

This crisis is not limited to California, although, with their "welcoming programs", Californians pay the most; Unreimbursed medical care in California exceeds $1.4 billion, and that is after the state programs have paid in excess of $8 billion dollars in program reimbursements!  In Texas, the estimated cost to treat illegals is $8.5 billion and Arizona is spending approximately $4 billion per year to treat illegals in their emergency rooms.  Even increased hospital charges and the accompanying raising of your medical insurance premiums has not been enough to cover the costs of illegal medical care!

What was, ten years ago, considered a "major irritant" has now become a full blown medical and budget crisis.  Over 50 percent of ER visits in Florida are illegal immigrants.  The trends are exploding as well in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and throughout the Midwestern states.

This crisis is directly attributable to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)implemented by congress and mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court.  The law basically stipulates that no hospital may turn away anyone who appears at their Emergency Room doors for treatment, regardless of their ability to pay for the treatment.   At the time of its implementation no legislator foresaw that this act would be corrupted and used by illegal aliens to receive medical care for nothing, but that is indeed what has happened.  Illegals know the laws that are of benefit to them far better than American citizens, whether it be welfare, wic and food stamps in the name of their American born child, or whether it is using the emergency room for routine colds or the "ER drop and go" methods employed by Los Angeles street gangs when their members get shot up during their nightly street wars.

The latest financial estimates for emergency medical care nation wide exceeds $120 billion dollars (and that does not include state program payments as exists in California and other states).  The costs to the taxpayer is enormous and crippling but that is not what should concern Americans the most; it is the explosive increase in the number of hospitals who are choosing to close their Emergency Rooms altogether.  This crisis has now threatened the very life of your loved one as the time may come when Emergency Room treatment is simply not available to you.

Sure, if you've ever gone to an Emergency Room in the last ten years you know that more than half of them will be populated by illegals going in to get free routine and emergency care.  The wait is long for you, the citizen.  However, how much worse will it be when there is no ER period!

Folks, state governments cannot change this!  City government cannot change this!  But your congress in Washington D.C.  can enact legislation that alters the earlier EMTALA legislation and limits participation to American citizens only!  Keep in mind, only the Congress can override a Supreme Court decision!

Write em!  Write em before you rush to an ER to save a family member's life and there ain't one around!