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The Hippocratic Oath has served millions. It is a code of conduct and ethics which every Doctor must adhere to. It is a promise to one's profession and society. The Oath is universal and shows no discrimination in color, nation, or economic status. Why is it suddenly being questioned and linked to illegal immigration?
There is a great debate involving illegal immigrants and medical care in the United States. Law states that ANY patient taken to ANY emergency facility regardless of legal or insurance status MUST be treated and granted ANY and ALL life saving measures deemed necessary. The problem begins when one tries to decide up to what point is the treatment itself deemed LIFESAVING?
Lifesaving is the act involving rescue, resuscitation and first aid. It does not contain within its definition therapy, hospice care, or rehabilitation. As I type, The United States and many of its hospitals are being punished by multiple foreign families with multimillion dollar lawsuits for the gross act of not considering ongoing rehabilitative care as a lifesaving medical necessity.
Eight years ago, Luis Alberto Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, while working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and forcibly returned him to his home country, where he now lives with his elderly mother in a one room house.
He has family in Florida who together with his Mother and legal guardian are pursuing a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Martin Memorial Hospital claiming negligence and discrimination.
Guatemala has many rehabilitative hospitals, but family of Mr. Jimenez claimed he was denied the right to a higher standard of rehabilitation simply because he was illegal and could not pay for the services.
According to reports, the hospitals use of forced "repatriation" of ill immigrants is not entirely uncommon. They do save their lives and attempt to find nursing homes that will provide long-term care to uninsured immigrants. The immigrants’ consulates are called in request of assistance, but for many immigration advocates, it is not enough. They consider repatriation a type of international patient dumping with “ambulances taking immigrants in the wrong direction, away from long term first world treatments to less adequate care."
For me, I find it both sad, and being as illegal Mexican immigrants have also been repatriated, infuriating. I am NOT angered by the United States, but by the immigrant families and governments. While we would all enjoy and greatly benefit first world medical care, the point is a life was saved. How could we as a family or our government even consider taking the gift of a loved one’s life, that cost us nothing in return, and not have gratitude? How could we insist lifelong care? Is there a "You break, you buy" or "Finders Keepers" medical rule that I haven't heard about?
I cannot find fault in the American system for not continuing medical care that they do not even offer their own citizens free of charge. There is a great difference between lifesaving care and life improving care.
The United States is not simply dumping immigrants on the streets after saving them. They travel to the foreign country and set up continued healthcare in the immigrant’s natal land. I do not feel the American medical staffs are denying immigrants the benefit of the sacred Hippocratic Oath, I feel they are simply transferring it to its rightful owner.
