>The keener view IMHO is that this overcrowding is desirable to the
>ruling elite because it will run the programs into the ground and it
>will cleanse the population of the most ill i.e., most costly.
OK, but what does that have to do with immigration? They're chopping and privatizing Medicare in Florida with exactly the pain you're describing and no-one's claiming it's because of immigration. If you _shut down_ hospitals you're going to create overcrowding. You'd have to have population _shrinkage_ to justify shutting down hospitals. Yet California has been shutting down hospitals at a dizzying rate. Is the influx of immigrants stimulating the shutting down of hospitals? Or is it lack of paying demand because people can't afford care and those who are admitted are being kicked out quicker and sicker?
The only claim related to immigration in Florida is that they might be able to get more political support if they convince white people that it's not them getting the whack. But that's just Jeb Bush using racism to shoot us all with the same bullet, not an actual factor in the cuts.
>Do you ever do
>a damn thing about it? Now people must pay co-pays for medicines
>they did not have to pay before.
My main political priority for the last few years has been the fight for national health care. So my analysis that the enemy is not immigrants, but drug and insurance companies, informs my struggle on that. Otherwise, I suppose I'd think slamming the borders shut even tighter or trying to keep 'illegals' from getting care would solve the problem of our perpetual health care crisis. But I don't think that. I do think the idea among the native-born in the U.S. that 'those immigrants will get free care' is a major obstacle to developing the social solidarity needed to win national health care, just as plain old racism, and plain old anti-disabled bias are obstacles.
This doesn't mean immigrants, or native-born people of color have caused the problem (and you are saying illegals so apparently legal immigrants somehow don't 'overcrowd' while illegals do), it simply means we need to show how this kind of splitting up of people into warring camps is in fact hurting all of us, and is likely a big reason we don't have a national health care system today, which, as you have eloquently attested, we desperately need. One way to show that is to see that people in lots of other countries are getting better care (longer lives, more care, less waiting) and their per capita spending is half what it is here. In fact, as you probably know, we spend more public dollars here to cover those who are covered by our public patchwork than most industrialized countries spend to cover their entire populations for all their healthcare needs. So the divisiveness in the U.S. is actually costing us more, both individually and nationally, than if we all got together and fomented a revolt against the employment-based insurance system and the rotten public safety net that purports to deal with the havoc caused by it.
Jenny Brown