AMA: More U.S. funds needed for immigrants' charity care

Hospitals and physicians are often left with the unpaid bills of people illegally entering the country who are brought in by federal agents for care.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. July 3, 2006.

Chicago -- Physicians and hospitals for years have been swallowing hundreds of millions of dollars annually in uncompensated care for illegal immigrants and other undocumented foreign nationals. Now doctors want the U.S. government to start footing more of the bill.

At the AMA Annual Meeting last month, the House of Delegates approved a resolution calling on policy-makers to take doctors and hospitals into account when crafting potential solutions to the immigration problem. For starters, physicians want the U.S. Office of Customs and Border Protection or another government agency to start paying for undocumented people that federal agents bring to local hospitals for care.

In many cases, detained illegal immigrants are placed in the hospital when they require immediate care and are taken back into custody once they have been treated, leaving the facility holding the unpaid bill, said Brian Johnston, MD, an emergency physician from California and an alternate delegate for the AMA's Organized Medical Staff Section.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services maintains a fund from which hospitals and physicians who provide care to undocumented people can receive reimbursement, but it is limited to $250 million per year for all states combined -- a figure that some physicians at the meeting said was insufficient.

"We believe that it is unconscionable for U.S. agencies to take injured illegal immigrants and dump them in American hospitals on 'humanitarian parole,' which is to say that they won't pay for the services," Dr. Johnston said.