[lbo-talk] Dean Baker on immigration

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Mon Apr 17 12:35:05 PDT 2006


Marta writes:
>What emergency rooms remain open
>require 12 hour+ waits to see a doctor. My disabled friends suffer
>because there are so many people on MediCal that they have cut doctor
>pay down to next to nothing and they don't get decent service.

But that's happening in places where there is not a significant influx of immigrants, also. For example, the VA here in Gainesville, Florida is pretty overwhelmed, according to friends who work there, and the public hospital is fixing to shut down. We have virtually no immigrant influx here. So how do you explain that?

Systemically, the U.S. health care system's main problem is insurance and drug company profiteering and emboldened government austerity programs, not the few immigrants who manage to somehow get care in what is largely an employment-based insurance system. As long as we're thinking it's the immigrants, not the insurance tycoons, our real enemy will be safe from our wrath.

Jenny Brown



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