Appalachian Patria

Appalachian Intellectual. To me that means plain thinking. I am A Non Commissioned Officer in the Army Reserves. Let me say...My views expressed here are mine and not those of The U.S. Army, Army Reserve or my fellow brethren in The National Guard. This is entirely Sua Sponte. This is My Thinking. I'm single and in my mid 30's. Politicaly, I'm a Libertarian. (Again, Sua Sponte.I do not represent the Libertarian Party.)I love my native Appalachia, Rock n Roll and...I love God.

Name:
Location: Brevard, North Caroilina

I started blogging for two reasons. I was concerned about the changes to the area I live in, Southern Appalachia and I was about to go to the war. I was in Iraq in 06 and 07 and now Kuwait in 11 and 12. Blogging was a means of documenting my experiences and hoping it would help gain clarity. I don't feel that way about it any more. It's said people write blogs because they are frustrated, that's why people read them too. That makes us sound apocalyptic. Are we? Let it be said, what I say here is of my own thinking. This is entirely Sua Sponte and not an official representation of the U.S. Military or the U.S. Government as a whole.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Sad But True

I did not write the following, it was an e-mail sent to me by my local Militant Mulungeon, Twister.

Currently we have Politicians...Why did I capitalize that?...telling us they have all the answers. A Government that creates your problem and then tells you it's the answer, isn't that a form of mental abuse? I won't get into the back ground of why this is so, I'm no expert, but it's not hard to figure out. You want more affordable health care? Sorry, Hillary, but socialism is not the answer.

Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:

1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963;
2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after; and,
3. Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later, by coincidence.

On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day --- every day.)

A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants.

That's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas.

According to a Dallas Morning News article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.

The ! average patient in Parkland maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child.

She is also an illegal immigrant.

By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay.

OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do. Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics.

NINE!

The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child --- her previous two was also born at Parkland. Her first two deliveries were free and the Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost ...

$200 to have them in Mexico.

This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away. (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.)

How long has this been going on? What are the long-term affects?

Well, another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the US illegally. Now she is having her own child there as well. (That's right, she's technically a U.S. citizen.)

These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, d! iapers and formula.

Most of these things are available to American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable.

Because these women are illegal immigrants, they do not have to provide any sort of legitimate identification or any proof of income. An American citizen would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income. An illegal immigrant needs only to claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word.

Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County residents who earn less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the 'free' care is not so easy for Americans.)

There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free treatment because they resided outside of! Dallas County so the hospital is going to sue them!

Illegals get it all free! But U.S. citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this?

As if that isn't annoying enough ...











Illegal immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish.











In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a great injustice to her.

In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern, for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility, will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum.! No oth er school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement.

(Sorry for the length, but I think this needs wide circulation, particularly to our 'employees' in Congress.)

Remember that this is only ONE hospital in Dallas , Texas. There must be many more hospitals across our country that also have to deal with this.













PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY U.S. CITIZEN YOU KNOW.


If you want to verify accuracy:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/parkland! .asp




That was HTML Hell...

I'm listening to The Cult. "I ain't no dirty suicide"
The Appalachianist

5 Comments:

Blogger 1776 said...

Yeah, this is outrageous, but nothing will change until citizens rise up and force the politicians and the law to enforce the laws in this country. Unfortunately most Americans are too self-absorbed to care or too stupid to understand how ultimately this will affect them.

What really pisses me off is last winter I helped a homeless Iraq Veteran and his family. We went to every agency out there to get them help and no one stepped up. Had he been an alcoholic, drug addict, or an illegal he and his family would have received everything they needed. And that is the truth.

truly, when I read these type stories there are days I want to become an ex-pat and move to New Zealand or Iceland.

10:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

goodness, this can get one on a slow boil to overflowing the pot...How about the $$ going to our Veterans!! or the USA citizen who needs it! I know, preaching to the choir here...

2:02 AM  
Blogger Hill Billy Rave said...

The ultimate thing here is that this has created "Inbedded Cost"...This is one contributer of many. But, politicians need something to harp about.

7:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Unbelieveable

8:32 PM  
Blogger Hill Billy Rave said...

well, I've rendered folks to...not too much to say status.

But the key thing here is we identify a problem.

6:42 PM  

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