Ivy League Conservatives

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Wanna make your blood boil? Read this.

Los Angeles Times:

Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full Medi-Cal coverage. Puente did so, her benefits were restored and she is now awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.

[ed note: You're joking, right? No. Read on]

Puente’s case highlights two controversial issues: Should illegal immigrants receive liver transplants in the U.S. and should taxpayers pick up the cost?

The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, and anti-rejection medications can run more than $30,000 annually, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide.

Donor livers are also in scarce supply. In California, nearly 3,700 people are on a waiting list for livers, according to the network. Last year, 767 liver transplants were performed in the state. More than 90% of the organs were given to U.S. citizens.

Donor livers are generally allocated through a geographically based distribution system on the basis of how sick the patients are and how long they have been on the transplant waiting list.

Immigration status does not play a role in allocating organs.

But some say that it should and that illegal immigrants should return to their home countries for care rather than receive organs and costly transplants ahead of legal residents and U.S. citizens.

“All transplants are about rationing,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. “I just don’t think the public ought to be funding any kind of benefits for people who are breaking the law.”

Larry Gonzalez, a U.S. citizen who has hepatitis C, has known for a decade that he needs a new liver but was just placed on the transplant waiting list last week.

“Why do we have to get in line behind immigrants, foreigners, when we have enough people here to fill the hospitals?” asked Gonzalez, 54, who lives in Ventura. “It just seems obvious to me that we shouldn’t be taking a back seat.”

But Dr. Michael Shapiro, vice chairman of the ethics committee for the organ network, said illegal immigrants have just as much right to organ transplants as U.S. citizens. He said it is likely that more illegal immigrants donate organs than receive them.

“People are people, and when you make an incision in an organ donor, you don’t find little American flags planted on their organs,” Shapiro said.

If that isn’t ridiculous enough, consider this, from later on in the piece:

About a month later, his mother found the Roybal clinic, which provided Lopez with medication and monitored his care. Though his drugs never lapsed, his liver is still in rejection.

“I’m just mad,” he said from the Los Angeles apartment he shares with his parents. “You can’t just leave a person to die. That’s pretty much what they’re telling me: ‘You’re illegally here. We’re just gonna let you die.’ “

Oh good. That’s a fantastic attitude to have when you’re receiving free healthcare, and you haven’t paid a dime for anything, and you can’t even have the class to be thankful for what you’ve gotten here and maybe at least try to be a citizen. Nah, let’s just take everything we can from California and subsist on the bottom rung of society forever. 

H/T Michelle Malkin.