McAllen's healthcare system featured on the BBC (Weir: sales, insurance)

[joejitsu]

Here is a link to the article. Enjoy!

BBC NEWS | Americas | Texas town's healthcare conundrum

[hellpaso]

Great. Thanks.

[teatime]

Weird. No mention of how illegal aliens clog up the system and cost the hospital/federal government lots of money. But, yeah, health care in the Valley is hugely expensive. I remember getting a $9,000 bill for an ER visit!

The true cost of treating illegal aliens and Medicare/Medicaid patients are shifted to those with private insurance. That's the way it is everywhere but, in other places, there is more of a balance between those who participate in the government-run insurance and those who have private insurance. Not so in the RGV, which has a huge poverty rate and one of the lowest (if not THE lowest) per capita income averages in the U.S. Probably the majority of the population has Medicaid.

Also, diabetes is like an epidemic in the RGV. The health care workers try like mad to stress preventative care like diet and exercise but it falls on deaf ears. Diabetes can be very preventable and treatable if the patients cooperate but, instead, their kidneys fail and their limbs are amputated.

[jtur88]

There was an excellent in-depth article about McAllen health care in New Yorker Magazine about 3 or 4 weeks ago. the article was quite long and very comprehensive, and compared McAllen with other cities where health care costs were about half as much.

[cobolt]

It's not PC to talk about how illegals are clogging the system. That's why they eliminate that part.

[theloneranger]

Originally Posted by cobolt

It's not PC to talk about how illegals are clogging the system. That's why they eliminate that part.

The only reason they clog up the system is because the system doesn't let them take care of their problems before they clog it up. If they were able to get preventative care instead of expensive emergency-only care than the problem wouldn't be anywhere near as bad.

They pay taxes just like you do--property taxes, sales taxes, very often income taxes and social security taxes and Medicare taxes, often for benefits that they can never receive.

Why should they not have access to the medical care they are paying for?

[joelaldo]

Originally Posted by teatime

Weird. No mention of how illegal aliens clog up the system and cost the hospital/federal government lots of money. But, yeah, health care in the Valley is hugely expensive. I remember getting a $9,000 bill for an ER visit!

The true cost of treating illegal aliens and Medicare/Medicaid patients are shifted to those with private insurance. That's the way it is everywhere but, in other places, there is more of a balance between those who participate in the government-run insurance and those who have private insurance. Not so in the RGV, which has a huge poverty rate and one of the lowest (if not THE lowest) per capita income averages in the U.S. Probably the majority of the population has Medicaid.

Also, diabetes is like an epidemic in the RGV. The health care workers try like mad to stress preventative care like diet and exercise but it falls on deaf ears. Diabetes can be very preventable and treatable if the patients cooperate but, instead, their kidneys fail and their limbs are amputated.

Here's the original link to the article in the New Yorker:

McAllen, Texas and the high cost of health care : The New Yorker


Your argument would make sense except that in the same article, it compares costs to El Paso, a border community that also has to deal with a large illegal population using the hospital systems. And McAllen's healthcare costs are significantly higher.

I'll tell you what's not PC. It's not PC to say that doctor's are shafting the medicare system. That's the reason healthcare costs are exorbitant in McAllen. They're just out to shaft the insurance companies/medicare/medicaid. They find out what will be covered, and what will be paid by the insuring institutions (private or public), do all the allowable tests, procedures, to get the most money.

Trying to blame this on the illegal and the Hispanic population of the valley is grossly misguided. El Paso has the exact same demographics, yet a much lower healthcare per person cost.