Hello, Wizbang! readers. Thanks for the link, "neighbor", and thank you to all who visited.
Practicing medicine in Massachusetts can be fascinating. Every now and then I get an "undocumented" individual referred to my office by the local Medicaid clinic practice. I used to think it was the doctors in that practice gaming the system illegitimately to get this non-eligible person enrolled in Medicaid, and it may have been that way a few years ago. The Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr did a little research after receiving a tip, and found that it's not the doctors working outside of the policy anymore; it is the policy.
Look, I’m not asking for any special treatment. I just want to be treated like an illegal alien.
All I ask for is a free ride, no questions asked. I want to go through life belting out those famous lyrics from “West Side Story":
"Everything free in America!”
The latest evidence of the double standard benefiting illegals comes from the state’s Office of Medicaid. It’s a memo instructing the welfare bureaucracy how to handle illegals applying for Mass Health, which is, like everything else for the aliens, free.
“Documentation supplied by non-citizens should still be logged onto the MA21 QAC screen, however it will not be necessary for this information to be verified and the system will determine eligibility based off of the information that the applicant declared.”
In other words, the criminal will be taken at his word.
The memo continues: “NOTE, this change only applies to non-citizensUS Citizen/Nationals must continue to verify their citizenship and identity.”
In other words, you, or your grandmother, will not be taken at your word.
I distinctly remember a case from a couple of years ago. A gentleman from a Caribbean island had arrived in the Lawrence, MA area only a couple of weeks prior, and showed up in my office with a lower extremity deformity with which he'd been living since he was a teenager. It seems he'd been in a motorcycle accident as a teen, and as the fracture was mistreated on that island he ended up with a foot pointing the wrong direction. He came to the US and presented at the local hospital ER, signing up for "free care" at the hospital, which then got him referred to a community orthopaedist who specializes in sports medicine for care of a complex and relatively high risk reconstructive problem, to be performed for free. More good news: After this "free" surgery he could sue if there were any problems, with no limit on "pain and suffering" awards. The kicker? Through his translator he told me he was planning to stay only until his leg was fixed.
It used to be the case that you could easily afford to "donate" your care in certain hardship cases - charity care - knowing that it wouldn't hurt the bottom line that badly and the help you might provide someone would be its own reward. Now, unfortunately, margins in states like Massachusetts are quite slim, with high HMO and government payment penetration. Thanks to Mr. Carr, I now know just how well the government is looking out for the physicians. Can you say, "indentured servitude?"
