Illegal immigrants part of the growing burden in health care

Border town hospitals straddle care and costs
By Robert Bazell
Chief science and health correspondent
Updated: 5:34 a.m. MT March 27, 2007

Cochise County, Arizona, is a place of fabled history involving the likes of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," which resulted in three deaths and several injuries

These days there is a still a lot of dangerous action here. Most of it involves the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and other Latinos trying to get into the United States. Cochise County is ground zero in the border wars.

At night helicopters with huge searchlights circle in the sky. Swarms of people try to scale walls as high as 18 feet. Smugglers' cars or trucks stuffed with humans speed along desert roads, chased by border agents.

These hazardous conditions land many people in tiny border hospitals such as Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee, Ariz. Copper Queen, with its 40 beds, is the only hospital for many miles along the Mexico border.