Dallas hospital plans to bill Mexico (and other Texas Counties)

[RamboLiberal]

http://washtimes.com/national/20060708-114247-7891r.htm

Parkland Memorial Hospital plans to bill Mexico and other countries to help cover the costs of health care for indigents.

The plan, which also seeks payments from adjoining counties in Texas, has brought a negative response from the Mexican government, with a diplomat terming it "an act of discrimination."

Last year, hospital officials said, Dallas County spent $76.5 million to treat people from outside Dallas. Of that, almost $27 million was not reimbursed.

Much of the cost was for treating patients from adjoining counties in Texas, which Dallas County officials claim is unfair to local taxpayers.

Collin County, just north of here and one of the state's richest counties, owed the most of any single entity, Parkland officials said -- about $7.6 million.

[Sherman A1]

1. Good for them

Chances of collecting are probably pretty slim, but doesn't cost much to send an invoice.

[celestia671]

2. I don't blame them...

When I lived in Dallas and had to go to Parkland's ER, I wound up leaving after almost three hours of waiting amid hundreds of people. I would bet that the majority of them, myself included, had no insurance or medicaid.

[msongs]

3. The mexican government DELIBERATELY exports people to solve

mexico's domestic problems.

all their hogwash about the welfare of mexican immigrants in the US is bull crap. The only thing the mexican goverment cares about is the money immigrants send back to mexico.

otherwise the mexican government loves the illegals going to the US because that makes fewer poor people and mouths to feed in mexico,
and gets rid of potential trouble makers (read: poor people ) who are not benefiting form any advanages of mexican citizenship.

reducing the burden of medical care for its own citizens is just another bonus of mexico's exporting people.

what the decent honest citizens of mexico really want are jobs that pay fair wages AT HOME.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[mitchtv]

4. Not only that, but they can refuse indigents

at Mexican Hospitals. I'll see if I can find the story some months back

http://www.kake.com/news/headlines/1070556.html

I think this is the story I remembered

[RCinBrooklyn]

18. In lieu of payment, they will send their first born....

[sandnsea]

5. The county part is crazy

What are people in a rural county with no hospital supposed to do? It isn't the people or the county's fault that hospital costs have gone through the roof. Even the richest areas still have poor people in them. They should bill the state of Texas for not having a health program that covers all its citizens, and after that the feds. Unless it's just a symbolic idea to get rural people to realize the problem. Otherwise it seems they're focusing on the wrong problem.

Mexico, I don't know. People keep missing the basic concept that anybody doing the jobs of illegal immigrants wouldn't have the money to pay hospital bills. The hospitals would still be out the money.

[Ilsa]

6. Also, if I was in need of emergency care, Parkland is where I'd want to

be taken to. I wouldn't want to stay there long term, but I'd like my emergency care there.

[sandnsea]

7. I've got no clue

But presuming they chose to be the region's premiere ER provider, they shouldn't be surprised that there will be people who can't afford to pay for it. If you want to take the capitalist approach to medicine that we have better medical technology because of the free market, then you have to take the downside too and that is that some people won't be able to pay. Seems like a fair trade-off, for those with insurance or money anyway.

[rainbow4321]

9. The county mentioned in the article is not rural

I'm sure there are rural counties on Parkland's invoice list, but Collin isn't one of them. It's one of the richest, most populated, fastest growing parts of the state. My Collin County city alone has 250,000 residents.
The county has no "county hospital"...they're all private..owned by Baylor, HCA and Tenet. And the county is run by heartless, greedy repukes.
See post #8 in this thread for the county's so-called "Indigent health program".

[sandnsea]

10. Ah, okay, I see

I've never lived in such a place. In Montana, most of the hospitals were non-profit and treated everybody. My hospital here is non-profit and treats everybody, I don't know about every hospital in Oregon although I've never heard of one of them turning anybody away. The idea of setting up a medical system that doesn't offer services to everybody is just so foreign to me that I can't even comprehend it. I've never lived anyplace that had county hospitals so I don't even know how that works and am not really sure whether that's what you mean by "public" or whether non-profit is what you mean by "public".

[rainbow4321]

11. Whoops. my bad

I edited my post...I used the work "public" when I should have said "county". For "private" I should have of said "for profit"
The hospitals in Collin County are all "private", for profit hospitals.
Dallas' Parkland is run by Dallas County, not a private company.

We seem to have more hospitals in Collin County nowadays then we do Starbucks. Ever since the dot com/high tech bubble was blown up by chimp's regime, the county's economy went down the toilet and they desperately turned to the health industry for help in recovering $$$.
So now we have new, for profit hospitals popping up EVERYwhere. But all those hospitals cater to the rich, well-insured people. The only good news out of it all is that Bill Frist's family own HCA facility here is taking a hit since they now have a LOT more competition. They don't want to spend the $$ to upgrade, so alot of their patients are going across town to the brand new, ritzier facilities.

[sandnsea]

12. Do you have religious hospitals?

I've always seemed to live in a city with a Catholic hospital. While they're annoying with their abortion issues, they do provide pretty good service although you do get billed for it. Do county hospitals bill for services too, or how are they set up? That's what I've never quite understood about county, "public", hospitals. Even in Missoula, both hospitals were non-profit IIRC. One was Catholic and the other was just a secular hospital group. But they both billed everybody for services. I think there may not have been much money in for-profit situations because the state regulates health providers to ensure hospitals' survival since the population is so low. They didn't want competitiveness ending up with no hospital having enough money to provide quality service. Oregon is a bit different too, with the Oregon Health Plan. They regulate too, such as in my town the only authorized Medicaid biller is the Catholic clinic/hospital. To reduce administrative and lab costs. It ought to work, I think our local problem is a horrible administrator more than the OHP system. The same Catholic group runs one hospital in Eugene and it's a good hospital.

It's not really "your bad" about your references to different kinds of hospitals, I think it just represents how different parts of the country have things set up.

[rainbow4321]

16. The one local Catholic hospital

was sold to the UT Southwest Medical School..so it is now part of the University of Texas system. Like Parkland, the med school is using it as a teaching hospital. One nurse told me recently that the hospital employees are considered state employees since it is the UT system that bought the facility. The hospital itself is in the same medical complex as Parkland, which is also a med school teaching facility..so they no doubt get alot of Parkland overflow patient population (indigent, no insurance, etc...).

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2000/11/29/University/Ut.System.Approves.Bond.Issue.To.Help.Buy.Dallas.Hospital-701269.shtml?norewrite200607100904&sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com

At a public hearing Tuesday, UT System officials announced a multimillion dollar bond issue to help finance the acquisition of a hospital in Dallas. Of the total sum, $9 million will go toward the $30-million price tag of St. Paul Medical Center Hospital, a 554-bed facility located in the middle of UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

The UT System will purchase the 1.2-million-square-foot hospital as part of efforts to increase medical-training facilities at UT Southwestern, which has had high student enrollment in the last decade.

"The University needs sizable hospitals to cater to students," said John Roan, UT Southwestern's senior vice president for business affairs, adding that St. Paul will be transformed more into a teaching hospital. "This purchase will increase our capacity to teach and will also take the load off of other teaching hospitals, one of which is currently overloaded."

Acquiring St. Paul could also help alleviate the demands placed on Southwestern's three teaching hospitals, including Zale Lipshy University Medical Center, which has a four-year backlog of surgical operations, Roan said. The UT System Board of Regents approved the purchase in October, months after the hospital went up for sale in early spring.

[rainbow4321]

8. Collin County will never pay what they owe

Brightest red, richest repuke county in the state.

How do they get away with not paying?? Because to be considered "indigent" in this county, one has to earn about $2,300/YEAR..not MONTH, but per year. So when Parkland tells Collin County "hey, we're treating your indigent population, pay up", Collin County says "nope, the patients you treated are not covered by our indigent program, so you don't get $hit from us".


http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/004892.html

"They said I made too much," said Wright, who would have to have earned less than $2,328 a year to qualify for indigent health care in Collin County.

Social workers in Plano, and Dallas County officials who say their public hospital is losing millions of dollars a year handling patients streaming in from their northern neighbor, have recently begun putting heat on Collin County to open its wallet and its heart.

But the county's fiscal conservatism has thus far proved to be an immovable force. "You bet. We don't like to pay taxes," said Collin County Commissioner Jerry Hoagland. "Nobody I'm talking with wants to raise taxes to pay for this."

"They brag they haven't spent taxpayer money on this in 20 years," said Pam Kaus, health care coordinator for Collin County Interfaith. The group, which has been vocal on the issue, was rebuffed in 2003 when it sought county money to open a clinic.

[Scooter24]

14. I agree...

The majority of my friends live in west Plano and I know the area very well. That county has to be one of the most snobish counties I've ever been to. And I live in Highland Park so I know my fair share of snobs.

[Gold Metal Flake]

13. Bill the employers.

Hey, give it a shot.

[Divine Discontent]

15. like one of the users said above...

and you hint on, the state of texas needs to supply medical care for its citizens (hint us should for all) and firm up the borders, and force those who are shown to have illegally cross the border to either go back, or have their employer pay their coverage for medical care and other expenses we shouldn't have to do for them... I'm in the minority on this on DU, but it's what I feel. I'd guess that about 60-65% of DU is for all the people here staying, and the rest are for some type of send back program or payments by their employers to cover costs for them for certain amount of time.




www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<<--- Check it out!

[Gold Metal Flake]

21. When it comes to imigration, Thom Hartmann speaks for me.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0705-23.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-21.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0308-20.htm

[sandnsea]

22. Billing employers is a GREAT idea

They could run it through the computers and bill, say, the top ten employers whose workers can't afford to pay hospital bills. Or maybe every employer whose workers have accumulated over $50-$100,000 in unpaid bills or something like that.

I still say people need to remember that these employers wouldn't pay US citizens that much more for their work than they do immigrants. We'd still have uninsured workers who still wouldn't be able to pay $10,000 for a surgery or $3000 for an ER bill.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

17. Parkland would save a lot of money if they stopped putting

magic bullets on every stretcher.

[KKKarl is an idiot]

19. Health care

When I lived in London. One day I got extremely sick. I got taken to a hospital. They asked from my information. Then I went to the emergency room, no waiting in a line. I got discharged after 7 hours. I went to the front desk to get my bill. They said there was no bill for my services. So me, being a foreigner, got free medical care because of a viable health care system in the UK. I do not advocate the same kind of treatment here, but we need a viable public health care system. This idea of the repubs to pay no taxes is ridiculous.

[rocktivity]

20. We should bill them for deporting their illegal immigrants, too

:think:
rocknation