STS BBNJ 08805 & VICINITY FORUM - - NOW 12 YEARS ONLINE 2008-2020

According to the California Hospital Association (CHA), illegal aliens cost hospitals across the state about $1.25 billion a year in unpaid medical care.

The CHA recently stated that $26 million of those costs are absorbed in the eight hospitals in Ventura County alone.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is asking the Obama administration to compensate hospitals for the care they extend to the millions foreign nationals living in this country illegally.

In June, AHA President Richard Umbdenstock sent a letter to President Obama, reminding him that while federal law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to every patient who walks through the doors, those hospitals are now forced to eat the costs of treating uninsured illegal aliens.

Umbdenstock wrote that the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act mandates treatment of the unisured “yet federal support for hospitals providing these services to the undocumented population is virtually nonexistent. Many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services or close beds.”

He continued: “Hospitals should not have to bear the burden.”

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has fought for tougher immigration enforcement for many years, and recently told the Ventura County Star: “When you see $5 aspirin, it’s not $5 aspirin, it’s not corruption, it’s the hospital trying to take care of the illegal alien who didn’t have insurance.”