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A "terminally ill", long-term patient who could cost Martin County taxpayers $millions$ if he is allowed to stay in the U.S is in court to make Martin County taxpayers pay for his multi-mullion dollar care. The illegal immigrant's case is now being heard by a jury.
Actually he is doing fine at his mothers house and he is not terminally ill. It is unfortunate that he could not pay his bills which was over 1.5 million dollars. Two things, he was here illegally so he had to know he was taking a risk. Kind of like crossing the desert with no water and complaining about being thirsty and two should he win his law suit against the hospital (who took him in) he would then have the money to pay his bills which the hospital should turn around and sue him for.
It is unfortunate that people take advantage of people like this by hiring them and not providing for them but we are a nation of laws and you can't pick and choose which ones you want to follow. It could have been worse. In LA they just push people out on to the street. At least the Hospital arranged for someone to take him in once he was sent back home. The hospital lost a lot of money treating this guy.
Being from Cuba you should be greatful that this country has made an exception for you. Florida hospitals and tax payers are being ripped off by people who come here illegally and they are forced to assist without being paid. In fact I believe Florida just changed the law to protect Hospitals from this very issue. All they have to do is stabalize the person and they can send him elsewhere.
Would you like it if the government suddenly came to you and told you that since you have a spare bedroom you need to take in a homeless person and feed and cloth him? Same thing.
Hospitals provide care but they are also in business to make money. Getting rid of the birden of illegals flooding our hospitals would resolve a good deal of our health care crisis. This also includes the thousands of people who fly in from other countries for operations and leave without paying the bills while those of us with insurance have to wait for treatment because these people are allowed to clog the lines.
Bottom line this person and the people who are suing on his behalf should thank the Hospital and instead of suing them they should raise money to pay them for his care.
Actually he is doing fine at his mothers house and he is not terminally ill. It is unfortunate that he could not pay his bills which was over 1.5 million dollars. Two things, he was here illegally so he had to know he was taking a risk. Kind of like crossing the desert with no water and complaining about being thirsty and two should he win his law suit against the hospital (who took him in) he would then have the money to pay his bills which the hospital should turn around and sue him for.
It is unfortunate that people take advantage of people like this by hiring them and not providing for them but we are a nation of laws and you can't pick and choose which ones you want to follow. It could have been worse. In LA they just push people out on to the street. At least the Hospital arranged for someone to take him in once he was sent back home. The hospital lost a lot of money treating this guy.
Being from Cuba you should be greatful that this country has made an exception for you. Florida hospitals and tax payers are being ripped off by people who come here illegally and they are forced to assist without being paid. In fact I believe Florida just changed the law to protect Hospitals from this very issue. All they have to do is stabalize the person and they can send him elsewhere.
Would you like it if the government suddenly came to you and told you that since you have a spare bedroom you need to take in a homeless person and feed and cloth him? Same thing.
Hospitals provide care but they are also in business to make money. Getting rid of the birden of illegals flooding our hospitals would resolve a good deal of our health care crisis. This also includes the thousands of people who fly in from other countries for operations and leave without paying the bills while those of us with insurance have to wait for treatment because these people are allowed to clog the lines.
Bottom line this person and the people who are suing on his behalf should thank the Hospital and instead of suing them they should raise money to pay them for his care.
What is the illegal/semi-citizen population in Martin County? Has it exploded like WPB, or has it moderated?
The horrible issue that should be talked about is unscrupulous business owners who hire illegal alliens in the first place. They take advantage of these people and allow situations to fester like this one. If businesses want to hire illegal aliens then they should have to pay a special tax to cover the health care of these individuals when caught.
Making it more difficult or unattractive for people to come here illegally would force them to stay at home and deal with the political and social issues that are gripping their own countries. Not bring them here with them. As a country we should support people who stay home and resist dictators rather than rewarding them for abandoning their famalies in order to risk their lives coming here to make a living.
Not only are the businesses taking advantage of these people but they are doing it to themselves. I was in Cincinnati last month and there was an illegal imigrant staking out a bank where other illegals were illegally depositing their money. When they went to draw out the funds to wire it home he would rob them. Of course they were not going to report the crime because they were criminals themselves and were in fear of being deported.
The last thing anyone wants to do is raid a place drag a bunch of people out and deport them leaving partial families behind with no support. The only way to stop this is to make it harder for them to come here with their families in tow in the first place. This way you don't have these social issues that are tough to deal with. The illegals are pawns of both the Government for not making it less attractive to come here illegally and the people who hire them knowing they are illegal.
I stopped going to a certain home improvement store in my area of Miami because you have to run the gauntlet of these poor slaves in order to get in and out of the store. It is as much as degrading to me to have to be forced to witness this as well as it is for these poor people having to beg in front of the store. When I brought it up to the manager he said that since they did not own the parking lot there was nothing they could do. Well being the anchor store in the shopping center and the sole reason people came to that shopping center they could threaten to move if the problem was not taken care of. In affect that particular company does not care about humans or human rights. I suppose that if someone hired one of these people and they were robbed they might have a case against them .
If imagrant groups are so hell bent on helping these people stay then they should start raising funds not for legal defense but for insuring they have health care and are treated with dignity and respect. Not forcing the Tax payers to pay for it. Had the immigrant groups stepped up to help this person then they could have raised the money to pay his hospital bills. Instead they were more interested in suing the hospital even though they paid over 1.5 million dollars out of their own pocket to help him and made arrangements for him to return home where he is doing well.
To answer your question I am sure the farms in western Martin County especially Indian Town (not sure if that is Palm Beach county or not) is full of people who are not here legally.
The last thing anyone wants to do is raid a place drag a bunch of people out and deport them leaving partial families behind with no support. The only way to stop this is to make it harder for them to come here with their families in tow in the first place.
I think we should raid places and drag people out and deport them. That's the law. Then deport their families. The law.
We don't stop bank robbery by handing out money. We don't stop car theft by giving people cars. We aren't socialists-yet.
The invaders are committing a crime. Every day they remain-every minute- is a crime.
I do agree it should be harder for them to come here. We need the Army on the border, with a shoot on sight order, for anyone attempting to cross the border.
our government has erred greatly by winking at 21 million illegal immigrants.
the real cost is yet to be admitted. cheap labor is not cheap any more than cheap OPEC oil.
Jury rules in favor of Stuart hospital that deported immigrant
July 27th, 2009 by Daphne Duret
STUART — A Martin County jury this morning sided with a local hospital in a closely watched lawsuit surrounding the private deportation of a brain-damaged Guatemalan patient.
Martin Memorial Hospital officials in 2003 sent Luis Alberto Jimenez, an illegal immigrant, on a chartered flight back to Guatemala after he had run up more than $1.5 million in medical bills in a case that garnered national attention.
Attorneys for Jimenez’s guardian, Montejo Gaspar, had asked the jury to find that Martin Menorial acted unreasonable in deporting Jimenez and asked for more than $1 million for his care in Guatemala and punitive damages on top of that.
Jurists rejected their arguments in a verdict returned early this morning, ending about nine hours of deliberations that began Thursday afternoon.
Jurists late Friday had requested to hear for a second time the videotaped deposition from former hospital CEO Dick Harmon. In it, Harmon said he approved Jimenez’s transfer because he thought Gaspar’s attorneys had exhausted their appeals to a judge’s ruling allowing the deportation.
Health care and immigration experts nationwide have been closely watching the court action. Lawyers say it may be the first of its kind and underscores the dilemma facing hospitals with patients who require long-term care, are unable to pay and don’t qualify for federal or state aid because of their immigration status.
Jimenez, now 37, was a Mayan Indian sending money home to his wife and young sons when in 2000, a drunken driver plowed into a van he was riding in, leaving him a paraplegic with the mental capability of a fourth grader. Because of his brain injury, his cousin Gaspar was made his legal guardian.
Under federal law, Martin Memorial was required to care for Jimenez until someone else would take him. Because of his immigration status, no one else would. But hospitals that receive Medicare reimbursements are required to provide emergency care to all patients and must provide an acceptable discharge plan once the patient is stabilized.
Jimenez spent nearly three years at Martin Memorial before the hospital, backed by a letter from the Guatemalan government, got a Florida judge to OK the transfer to a facility in that country. Gaspar appealed.
But without telling Jimenez’s family — and the day after Gaspar filed an emergency request to stop the hospital’s plan — Martin Memorial put Jimenez on a $30,000 charter flight home early on July 10, 2003.
Weeks later, Jimenez was released from the Guatemalan hospital and soon wound up in his aging mother’s one-room home in a remote mountain village.
The case has raised the question of whether a hospital and a state court should be deciding whether to deport someone — a power long held by the federal government.
The lawsuit sought nearly $1 million to cover the estimated lifetime costs of his care in Guatemala, as well as damages for the hospital’s alleged “false imprisonment” and punitive damages to discourage other medical centers from taking similar action. Staff writer Andrew Marra and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Thank God common sense prevailed. The fact that he is living with his aging mother is not of anyone's concern here. That is an issue for Guatemala. If the imigrant groups that assisted in this case really cared about him they would raise money and get him decent treatment in Guatemala. But they don't so they won't.
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