Why Mexican Hospital Emergency Rooms Aren’t Swamped

Emergency rooms in American hospitals are being overwhelmed by uninsured patients who don’t pay for medical care, as my VDARE.COM colleague Edwin Rubenstein has pointed out in several articles (see here and here ). A significant portion of these patients are immigrants, often illegal aliens.

The complicating factor is a law known as EMTALA ( Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985) which forbids emergency rooms from refusing service to anyone, regardless of ability to pay.

This has resulted in ERs being swamped by patients who must be treated for free, including illegal aliens. And not only illegal alien Mexicans in the U.S. In a brazen display of chutzpah, Mexicans who live on their side of the border are taken by ambulance to hospitals on the U.S. side, where they know they can’t be refused.

So not only does our federal government refuse to control the border, it also makes hospitals treat illegal aliens for free.