By: Rosemary Spindler
“Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
-Emma Lazarus ( part of: “The New Colossus”)
About a year ago, Mina Kumar got a phone call from her dad in the middle of a movie. She was crying and whispered something to her husband, James Spindler. She would not tell her son and daughter what she had heard. After a while she finally told her children that their grandmother had cancer. A couple of months later and after several weeks of stress for Mina, she learned that Suzan Kumar, Mina’s mother, found out that the medicine she has been taking seemed to be working. The only thing is the price. “$500 per DOSE. Like per PILL. She would not be alive without it. Fortunately, she has very very good insurance.” Mina exclaims when prompted. This means Suzan has to take a five hundred dollar pill every day for the rest of her life or she will die.
Another, less extreme, example of the need for health insurance, is when James Spindler recently had an ear infection. He waited for it to go away but soon realized that it wasn't going to get better. He then went to the emergency room to get help. After the appointment and treatment, the total bill turned out to be seventeen hundred dollars. But because of the deal the hospital had with his insurance company, the price was reduced by fifteen hundred dollars: by more than two thirds. The final bill James had to pay was only two hundred and fifty dollars. Not having insurance for even an average citizen could be the difference between life and death if something happens that is bad enough.
Imagine being an immigrant, just going through a process where just the first step of becoming so called “legal” takes a year. If you did not have enough money to pay for insurance, getting a common thing such as a small ear infection could cost seventeen hundred dollars that you very likely could not afford.
This is a common problem among immigrants. Around 44.7 million immigrants were living in the United States in 2018 and 14.5 million of them were not insured. A much bigger percentage of immigrants who have recently arrived do not have health insurance. One reason that immigrants cannot get health insurance is because it is so expensive. In an interview with Sarah Wheat, who works for Planned Parenthood, which is an organization that provides healthcare to women, said, “Texas has one of the highest rates of uninsured residents in the U.S. We serve many patients who are uninsured, live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have enough funding to pay for the cost of their services. Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit so we only charge part of the cost of providing the healthcare but this can still be a barrier for some patients.” When Sarah says that some people cannot pay even the much lowered cost of the health care Planned Parenthood provides, means that they would have a very hard time paying for insurance. According to data collected by eHealth, the average health insurance cost for single coverage in 2018 is four hundred and forty dollars per month. For someone newly arrived to the country that was desperate enough to try to sneak across the border instead of turning themselves in as an asylum seeker, four hundred forty dollars can be a very large amount of money. Many immigrants are sending money back to their families at home, or if their families also took the journey, struggling to support them. Even many average American citizens are only able to afford insurance through their employer. Immigrants are much less likely to get hired for jobs where their employer will provide their insurance. Being undocumented makes the struggle even harder. People who are here illegally have to work for low paying jobs for cash only. As not all employers are required to provide insurance, and undocumented immigrants often do not work for companies, they almost never are able to get insurance for them or their families.
Many immigrants are not able to get medical care at all. There are some organizations that help people that are seeking asylum, but there is only so much they can do to help. There is this one organization called Jericho Road and Mariah Walker, Legal Services Manager, when asked if they could help everyone that came to them replied, “There was this one year right after Donald Trump was elected where there was this overflow of immigrants that needed shelter and we were not able to provide anything for them.” One thing the organization does is provide legal services for immigrants to become documented, which makes living and working in the US easier, as well as receiving medical care. If the organizations like Jericho Road are not able to help all of the immigrants that come to them then there are more immigrants that are not able to get immediate healthcare and are left to look other places.
Getting medical care is important for recently arrived immigrants because, often on the hard journey to the United States they can get hurt from the travel. Often, immigrants coming to the United States from Mexico hire smugglers to help them get across the border. The conditions can be horrible. Many immigrants will be stuffed into tiny spaces such as trunks of cars or trailers. One especially horrible incident was when twenty six undocumented immigrants were found in the back of a tractor trailer. “[When asked for his I.D.] The 32-year-old truck driver presented a California driver’s license as his own. However, that document was later determined to be an imposter document. The driver was determined to be a Mexican national illegally present in the United States.” “The undocumented immigrants were locked and trapped inside this tractor trailer in below 45 degree weather with no safety restraints,” said Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez.”Both the immigrants and the driver were placed under arrest. Even if an immigrant decides not to hire a smuggler, they can face gang violence, unsafe river crossings, and some immigrants even try to jump trains and can get killed or hurt that way.
Imagine if Suzan Kumar was a newly arrived immigrant who did not have insurance and had just been diagnosed with cancer. She just found out that the only medicine that could save her life costs five hundred dollars a day.Just to save her own life, she would have to make five hundred dollars a day. But then what if she had a family to support? Immigrants are unlikely to get high paying jobs meaning to make enough to save her life, she could work almost every hour of the day and still not have enough money to pay for the medicine. If she did not have insurance, she would die.
Because of the conditions and the harm that can come to immigrants in the process of immigrating, the ability to receive healthcare when they reach the United States is vital. Different states offer different services. Just like the split decision of allowing them to work in the U.S., not all states offer medical care to immigrants. Almost no states offer undocumented immigrants health care or coverage for health care. For example, while some states like Texas have long laws with lots of exceptions and conditions:
“Lawfully residing children who entered the U.S. on or after Aug. 22, 1996, are eligible for children’s Medicaid or CHIP, depending on their income. 1 Prenatal care is available regardless of immigration status through the CHIP Perinatal program. 2 NOTE: Texas denies federal Medicaid to most “qualified” immigrant adults who entered the country on or after Aug. 22, 1996, even after they complete the federal 5-year bar. ”
Other states like Montana have simple laws that just offer health care to “Lawfully residing children ''. In any case, many immigrants have to travel to certain states to gain access to affordable or free health care services. Many states do not offer healthcare to adults and only “six states and the District of Columbia have expanded their Medicaid programs to cover children through 18 years old (California recently approved coverage through age 25), regardless of immigration status.” Some states also offer healthcare to women specifically pregnant women. “About 16 states cover income-eligible pregnant women, also regardless of residency status.”
Many organizations whose purpose is to provide healthcare for immigrants do not ask about their legal status. Some states passed a law that states that it is required to report an immigrant’s legal status. When Sarah was asked if it was required or if at Planned Parenthood they asked about people’s immigration status, she replied almost offended “We don’t ask about immigration status of our patients. We provide healthcare to patients regardless of their insurance or immigration documentation status, regardless of their income, their zip code or who they love. All are welcome.”
This attitude is what runs the organization and is what gives people care. This company is a prime example of the view that should be presented across the country. The fact that insurance is inaccessible to many people is completely unfair and can cost people’s lives. Suzan Kumar and her family are lucky enough to have great insurance that pays for her medicine but many are not as fortunate. Insurance and health care is needed for everyone across the planet and the attitude that all are welcome is what will get us there.
Bibliography
Batalova, Jeanne, Jessica Bolter Jeanne Batalova, Brittany Blizzard, and Jessica Bolter. 2020. “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States.” Migrationpolicy.org. February 12, 2020. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states.
The Washington Post. 2018. “Analysis,” June 19, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/06/19/the-series-of-choices-faced-by-immigrants-fleeing-central-america/.
Insurance, Ehealth. 2016. “How Much Does Health Insurance Cost Without a Subsidy?” eHealth Insurance. October 10, 2016. https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/affordable-care-act/much-health-insurance-cost-without-subsidy.
“Border Patrol Discover 26 Smuggled Immigrants Hidden Inside a Tractor-Trailer | U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” n.d. Accessed March 3, 2020. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/border-patrol-discover-26-smuggled-immigrants-hidden-inside-tractor.
Hoffman, Jan. 2019. “What Would Giving Health Care to Undocumented Immigrants Mean?” The New York Times, July 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/health/undocumented-immigrants-health-care.html.
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