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Murphy Martin Commentary
June 15, 2006

 "Expensive Babies"

We have been hearing many story lines about illegal immigrants on the air-waves and in news publications. Plug the leaky borders, build 1200-miles of fencing, ship the illegal's back, grant them amnesty, arrest those who hire them, approve new legislation, enforce existing laws. In the midst of all the attention being paid to illegal immigrants in America--12-million seems to be the most used number--a statistic in a front page story of the Dallas Morning News jumped out at me Monday of this week.

The headline on the story was: SEEING THOSE WITH CHILD WITHOUT HESITATION! In the fifth paragraph was this statistic: "A recent patient survey indicated that 70 per-cent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three-months of 2006 were illegal immigrants, hospital officials said."

Parkland's annual birth rate hovers around 16-thousand . Using that number, , January, February and March births would total 4,000. Seventy-per-cent of 4,000 would be 2,800. That is two-thousand-eight-hundred more illegal
children born at just one hospital.

Guess who pays for all these medical bills? At Parkland, bringing new babies into this world is a money-making business. In 2004, according to the Morning News, Parkland spent nearly 71-million dollars delivering nearly 6,000 babies but ended the year with nearly 8-million dollars surplus in obstetrics.

How did the hospital wind up with a surplus? Medicaid paid them nearly 36-million dollars to cover the delivery costs for the undocumented women and Dallas County taxpayers kicked in another 31.3-million and the federal government came up with another 9-million dollars to make up for the high percentage of patients on Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor.

While you are wondering what the final outcome is going to be on new legislation supposedly aimed at stopping illegal entry into America. Whatever happened to the enforcement of laws already on the books?

Dr. Ron Anderson, Parkland's president and chief executive officer is quoted in the News as saying: "We were tasked with taking care of the indigent sick of Dallas county...that included the immigrant population both legal and illegal." From
the hospital's view, these immigrant women are but the latest of low-income, uninsured patients served by the charity hospital.

The Parkland staff stops short of asking the women if they are illegal immigrants. In fact the patients are assured, according published reports, that none of their documents will be shared with immigration officials.

The bottom line appears to be-- Parkland is not going to worry whether the mothers are legal or illegal. It is big business for them, and, Uncle Sam and the taxpayers of Dallas County are paying the hospital bills!

When you have a potential of 10-thousand new babies a year from just illegal immigrant mothers---and our tax dollars underwriting the costs!

Who says charity doesn't begin at home--- OUR HOMES!

WE are paying those hospital bills in Dallas and hospitals throughout America! No wonder some people don't want our leaky borders with Mexico closed!
 

Murphy Martin

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