posted on December 13, 2002 10:32:33 AM new
Then you'd go to jail because the state protects itself first second and third, before worrying about individuals.
posted on December 13, 2002 11:59:47 AM new
Illegal aliens,have sucked the life out of all the States agencys here.Human Resources is a joke for any legal citizins.It isnt just the hospitals affected.What is the purpose of this maddness?
posted on December 13, 2002 01:23:24 PM new
It is not very common - but a few individuals have done the same thing here running over to Canada to use their medical system when they knew they would never qualify for free treatment here.
posted on December 13, 2002 01:49:34 PM new"The border crossings have been reported from Brownsville, Texas, to Douglas, Ariz., and involve Mexican ambulance companies whose drivers have been instructed by hospital officials in Mexico to take ailing and uninsured patients to the United States, the authorities said."
""Some emergency rooms have shut down, and others will close because they simply cannot afford to stay open," he said. "Meanwhile, taxpaying American citizens are denied care or have to wait an inordinate time to receive emergency care."
In the meantime, Multi-millionaire (possibly Billionaire) Dick Cheney gets his heart bypass operations for FREE; gratis of the US Taxpayer! Same goes for all of those jerks in Congress who scream and shout how EVIL Americans are who have to be denied medicine and actually complain!
posted on December 14, 2002 10:15:08 AM new
The assumption, that Mexicans are responsible for the fact that American citizens are denied care or have to wait an inordinate time to receive emergency care is not true.
The truth is that the federal government refuses to provide financial support to help community medical centers and doctors in the border areas.
posted on December 14, 2002 08:39:17 PM new"The truth is that the federal government refuses to provide financial support to help community medical centers and doctors in the border areas" (or it's our federal government's fault)
No, the problem arises because Mexico will not care for it's own. The sick should be treated. The Mexican medical community acts to fulfill that obligation by sending sick north where treatment is mandated in law. They would not need to do that if treatment were mandated in Mexico under Mexican law. So the problem is at the feet of the Mexican legislature.
Oh but there is no money for that in Mexico? Too true. Is that the fault of our federal government too?
posted on December 14, 2002 09:48:39 PM new
" The Mexican medical community acts to fulfill that obligation by sending sick north where treatment is mandated in law."
..Mexican doctors take the Hippocratic oath to preserve life just like US doctors...if you were one, and knew you could not provide a patient with the care he or she needed, and that the nearest available facility was across the border, you'd send your patient there too.
"They would not need to do that if treatment were mandated in Mexico under Mexican law."
Basic health care for all was instituted several years ago and is thriving in many areas. Here's a clip from a 1999 State of the Union address:
"Health care
The budget heading that has seen the highest growth has been health services, with a 70 percent increase in real terms.
By next year all Mexicans will have access to the basic health-care package in hospitals, clinics, health centers or mobile units. The basic package prevents and addresses Mexico's most widespread and frequent diseases.
Over the past five years, 16 million people have been incorporated into basic health services. Ninety eight percent of children under five years of age are now being vaccinated against 12 diseases.
During the past five years this administration has built 156 new hospitals - one every 12 days - and 2,800 health-care centers and clinics - 1.5 per day. Furthermore, it has hired 45,000 new physicians and nurses to improve service quality...."
In many areas, basic services are in place and functioning well. During a trip to the interior of Mexico last year, we had a child fall and knock a nice cut in her head. As is the normal custom, we took her to a nearby Mexican Cruz Roja station (red cross). The EMT's there patched her up and determined that she needed stitches. She was (unnecessarily, in my opinion) transported to the small but efficient hospital in an ambulance, where she received excellent care by a young doctor...sewn up and treated with antibiotics and given a 10 day prescription. There was NO paperwork and NO payment requested. I was told, "this is basic care and is provided for all"...total time took about 1 and 1/2 hours from fall to laughing about it.
Most of the people who are being sent north for health care are living along the border, where the population has grown exponentially since NAFTA began. Border cities are cheek to jowl with the maquiladoras (factories) of US companies who have relocated there. Millions of people, mostly from poorer southern Mexico, have flocked to these cities seeking work in these maquilas...which pay thier workers minimum wage, which is about ONE DOLLAR an hour, with no benefits other than Mexican social security payments required by the Federal government.These cities are strained to the breaking point in every aspect of their infrastructure, not just the ability to provide health care to those living within their borders. The companies are allowed to violate environmental laws,are not required to provide services for their employees and sexual harrasment is rampant.The majority of their workers are single mothers, probably the most vulnerable and easily exploited segment of the Mexican population, let alone our own.
It's real easy to look to Mexico as a scapegoat for our own problems. It's real simple to say "if we'd just seal that border" or "if Mexico would just take care of it's people"...sadly, it's just a tad more complicated than that.
posted on December 14, 2002 10:16:13 PM new
It is. The one and ONLY way that these obnoxious problems is to go conquer Mexico and bring it under American Rule. We would then "pacify" the locals by bringing real reforms to them; such as, real minimum wage laws, worker's laws, living laws, and other things that we, as Americans enjoy on a daily basis?
What?
You say that the Mexicans don't want to be conquered? You say that they LIKE living as virtual slaves to the corporations and corruption there?
Too bad!
We did n't ask them to spill over here because it's so lousey there that the only way that they could live decently is by coming here illegally. Instead, let's bring America to them! Let's get a UN Resolution or two and then threaten to bomb the hell outta Mexico if they don't shape up! Works for Saddam and Iraq -- why not our nearest neighbors?
posted on December 15, 2002 12:48:04 AM new
profe51,
Am I mistaken in my belief that Mexico is signatory to NAFTA? It wasn't such an imposition as to cause such disruption until the collapse of the Mexican peso, or am I wrong there too?
I'm certainly happy to hear that there is a growing system of universal health care in Mexico but why would that exclude the border cities? It really doesn't, does it? So if it doesn't then the statement that the Mexican government has not provided the mechanisms for necessary care to it's citizens which does, we agree, bring the treating physicians to the choice of sending patients over the border to receive that necessary care as it is still the only such care available remains true, no?.
The solution is not to expect the U.S. to provide more and more, the solution is to expect the Mexican government to do that by the fulfillment of the programs you tout here. What, you say? Mexico agreed not to tax the U.S. companies that operate factories within it's borders at rates sufficient to enable the full implementation of the universal health plan? My! Who's fault is that??
I'll leave all of that about companies being allowed by the Mexican government to violate environmental laws and all as off topic.
[ edited by krs on Dec 15, 2002 12:52 AM ]
posted on December 15, 2002 03:41:23 AM new
Mexico presents a unique challenge due to geography.
The US will not seal the border because it will cause economic and political instability in Mexico.
And the worse it gets in Mexico, the greater demand to come to el Norte.
I think the US politicians are just waiting and hoping that things will over time become better in Mexico if they leave the borders open. As things become better fewer people leave and many go back.
But ..... there is one huge problem hovering over this scenario. The US economy is faltering and some have observed that we may see a deflationary recession (that is a nice way of saying economic depression).
With the US economy faltering, there is less and less political support for allowing illegal aliens in the country.
Bush fired his economic team because someone put a bug in his ear that the economy is teetering in a far worse fashion than realized or admitted by his economic team.
posted on December 15, 2002 08:05:54 AM new
Is it moral to interject our economic system into countries that do have the institutions and regulations/safeguards that we have in the US ?
Some argue that it is better to interject Nike into a country that exploits child labor because the Nike job is the best job the kid will ever have and lifts them out of abject poverty into regular poverty.
There have also been some reports of union organizers disappearing and turning up dead in Mexico.
So far, no one has offered a theory of an expanding and dynamic economy that doesn't employ exporting jobs and capital to third world cheap labor countries.
Is placing factories in impoverished areas a means to "civilizing" those areas or are they just a new colonizing system that offers no benefits except to the multi-nationals ?
" Am I mistaken in my belief that Mexico is signatory to NAFTA? It wasn't such an imposition as to cause such disruption until the collapse of the Mexican peso, or am I wrong there too?"
you might be..NAFTA and the last real peso crisis happened in the same year..1994. Economists do not agree on whether one predicated the other..Mexico is of course part of NAFTA, being part of North America.
" I'm certainly happy to hear that there is a growing system of universal health care in Mexico but why would that exclude the border cities? It really doesn't, does it?"
I didn't say it did. The problem is the exponential population growth along the border,and the local government's inablility to keep up with infrastructure.You can see exactly the same thing happening on THIS side of the border, in the Texas colonias, which stretch basically from El Paso to Brownsville. The Texas and US governments also are unable to keep up with the growth. Basic infrastructure is non-existent. Most colonia residents are not indocumentados, they are the descendents of the old Bracero program, which ended in 1964...legal Americans. The average home in the colonias contains six people, and median annual income is between 7 and 11,000 dollars.These are people who have little or no health insurance,and what clinics and hospitals that exist are unable to provide adequate health care. Running water, electricity, and sewage treatment is often non existent.(I add this at the risk of being off topic) I guess you could say the same thing about the US not taking care of it's own.
" The solution is not to expect the U.S. to provide more and more, the solution is to expect the Mexican government to do that by the fulfillment of the programs you tout here."
tout
VERB:
To increase or seek to increase the importance or reputation of by favorable publicity: ballyhoo, boost, build up, enhance, promote, publicize, puff, talk up. Informal : plug. Slang : hype. See KNOWLEDGE.
I am not touting anything here. You made the following incorrect statement:
"No, the problem arises because Mexico will not care for it's own. The sick should be treated...
I offered you some information to indicate that it isn't because Mexico "will not"; rather they CANNOT care for their own along the border.
"Mexico agreed not to tax the U.S. companies that operate factories within it's borders at rates sufficient to enable the full implementation of the universal health plan? My! Who's fault is that?? "
Good question. Find me a significant developing or third world country anywhere who; when billions of US dollars were waved in it's face, was able to say "no thanks, we can take care of our own without your cash".
The US border with Mexico has always been porous...thinking that sealing it will ever happen is wishful thinking that does not look at the totality of the problems that exist along BOTH sides of it.
NAFTA creates all the measures that the large corporations are trying to impose in their own cities and towns and in all the cities and towns of the planet: overexploit workers, that is to say, reduce salaries, control natural resources (reduction in the costs of raw materials), eliminate laws, norms, and regulations -"freedom of movement of capital",- especially within labor, the environment and finances. All of these put the unity of our nations in danger.
In Mexico, an undetermined but important number of businesses have been seriously affected by not being able to confront the growing foreign competition in both local and international markets.
The purchasing power of Mexicans, a basic element of the internal market, fell 25% between the great crisis of 1994 and the new crisis that began in 2000. In order to promote an export policy, that is to say, the policy of corporations which run sweatshops, it is they who sell abroad almost half of the exports classified as made in Mexico.
Since NAFTA has been in force, private sector workers' pensions have been privatized (a creation of Afores). Now, the Afores have the right to speculate with the papers of private businesses and, on the other side, the government is preparing the dismantling of the Institute of Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE). This policy, as has occurred with the pensions of U.S. unions that were invested in Enron and Global Crossing stocks, only serves to increase the penalties for the workers and the employees.
The farming sector is among those that has suffered the consequences of NAFTA the most. Traditional crops that form the diet of the Mexican people are being imported in great quantities. Around 25 million people live in the countryside and among them is the greater part of the 30 million Mexicans that live in "extreme poverty." The opening of the market, on the other hand, has in no way benefited small and medium sized farmers in North America.
Today the multinational agro-industrials in the United States dominate the Mexican market for seeds and commercial agricultural products. Local production tends to be limed to certain "exportable" products.
Finally, the immigration of Mexican workers to the United States and the installation of maquiladoras in Mexico that pay wages that are 10 times lower than in the United States has increased with NAFTA, which has exerted an enormous pressure on the salaries and collective bargaining contracts of North American workers. The policy of North American companies of imposing lower wages, was simultaneously expressed in the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court justices which denied the right of free unionization to immigrant workers of Mexican origin.
This situation will worsen with the introduction of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Now faced with the struggle of the Mexican workers in the maquiladoras to form independent unions and faced with a so-called "strong peso," the maquiladora companies, especially in textile fabrication, are migrating towards other countries with even lower wages. In Mexico the cost of the labor force in the maquiladoras is $2.38 dollars per hour, in the Central American countries it is almost $1.60, in Sri Lanka, $.58 cents, in Malysia, $.99, and in China $.43. More than 350 maquiladoras previously installed in Mexico have moved to China.
In the framework of crisis and for the first time since its creation in the 60s, the maquiladora industry has stopped growing; part of the process in which North American industry has reduced production. In some cases, such as in textile fabrication, which is one of the most important, industry has started to transfer to other countries with lower salaries. One-hundred thousand jobs were lost in the maquiladoras between May of 2000 and October of 2001.
The maquiladoras have pressured for an even further reduction in the wages in Mexico. In order to deal with the complaints of the multinationals, the Mexican government is trying to offer a "docile and cheap labor force" in the south and southeast of the country, with the so called "Plan" Puebla Panama (the first step toward FTAA in our country). In addition, it raises the problem of expulsion of the indigenous from their communities. The government is explicitly trying to compete with the low wages in China, that is to say, trying to lower wage costs in Mexico even more, which will bring as a consequence an increase in immigration towards the United States and therefore a greater pressure on the living conditions and wages of North American workers.
But doesn't the same occur in the United States, where the automobile manufacturers transfer their operations to the southern part of the country where they don't want to see "a union 100 miles from the plants"?
Is it not an essential element of democracy to recognize the right of workers to organize independently to defend their rights? Don't they intend to deny this right in the maquiladoras in Mexico and the plants in the south of the United States with NAFTA and the FTAA?
It is a process to reduce the living conditions of U.S. workers, employing a reserve labor force that is mainly Mexican.
posted on December 15, 2002 02:50:20 PM new
profe51,
"Cannot" is only the claimed reason for "will not"; will not remains regardless the reason. But is it true that the mexican government cannot or only that it has not might be more an accurate query, nevertheless the problem of overusage of American facility remains that Mexico is not caring for it's own. You tout, in a description of an incident concerning your child, that the Mexican system is working in wondrous ways but that is obviously only true in selected parts of Mexico. No matter how you try to fend the fact by pointing to causative factors it remains the cause of the problems brought here which are the consequent overtaxing of American health facilities adjacent the border regions that Meico won't care for them. It's simply that.
I haven't proposed to seal any border. I would only ask that Mexico carry their portion of the load however they do it. What has become of the "billions of US dollars were waved in it's face"? Certainly those monies could be used for this?
I'm sure that things would change quickly enough in the Mexican health system at the border if American policy were to shoot every Mexican presenting sick at a clinic north of the border - Mexican doctors would no longer send patients north for it would violate their hypocratic oath to send them to their deaths. Then don't you think that you'd be proven wrong in saying that the problem is that Mexico cannot care for it's own?
posted on December 15, 2002 03:56:08 PM new
I have had no doubt, Helen, that the Mexican people were getting ramrodded in the rear just like we are. That neither justice nor human rights nor decent standards of living and working will come to neither here nor there without critical change. That those politicans on both sides that are waiting for things to get better will not see it, because right now, it is certainly benefitting many corporations. Since they are getting everything from it, don't expect things to change soon without a fight.
posted on December 15, 2002 06:19:30 PM new
"You tout, in a description of an incident concerning your child, that the Mexican system is working in wondrous ways but that is obviously only true in selected parts of Mexico"
I guess anyone who offers concrete evidence for a difference of opinion is "touting"...ok, I believe I indicated that the system is only working well outside the border region, and that that is where the problems US facilities face are coming from.
" I'm sure that things would change quickly enough in the Mexican health system at the border if American policy were to shoot every Mexican presenting sick at a clinic north of the border - Mexican doctors would no longer send patients north for it would violate their hypocratic oath to send them to their deaths. Then don't you think that you'd be proven wrong in saying that the problem is that Mexico cannot care for it's own?
No, I don't think I'd be proven wrong in saying that. It is MY OPINION, based upon years of first hand observation, that Mexico CANNOT provide adequate health care for it's citizens along the border, due in large measure to the algorithmic population growth there caused by the influx of US maquiladoras. However, if your hateful suggestion were to come true,I just might be proven right in saying that many Americans hide their cultural prejudices behind simplistic rationalizations.
[ edited by profe51 on Dec 15, 2002 06:20 PM ]
posted on December 15, 2002 07:02:49 PM new
This is not a new thing, at least in Brownsville.
And the laws mandating treatment in the ERs without regard to insurance status, much less citizenship, have saved lives. It was obscene how many people were dying while being shipped out of one hospital to the city or county hospital because they didn't have insurance, even though there were beds available in the first.
Don't forget, in many hospitals, uninsured patients are billed at a higher rate than insured, so the media may give a figure that is artificially inflated.
HMOs and DRGs and, most of all, greed, broke the health care system in Texas. Junquemama, look what happened to Brack.
Profe51 has a very good point about the maquiladoras and the explosive population growth along the border. The health care system on both sides has been unable to keep up, and I know clinics on the US side of the border have closed because of lack of funding. Another point that he missed is that the maquiladoras also affect the health of residents in the area, on both sides of the border.
Hippocratic oath.
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on December 15, 2002 07:33:37 PM new
snowyegret:
you're right about the health issues of the maquiladoras. As I said, they are allowed in many instances to operate without regard to environmental regulations, and the safety of their employees..
posted on December 15, 2002 08:00:45 PM new
Their profit has a high human cost. And you're right about the influx from southern Mexico. After NAFTA was signed, and the border exploded, we were seeing some people that spoke Indian dialects, and little Spanish. The border is a fluid place.
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on December 15, 2002 09:35:18 PM new
We should examine our own notion that adequate health care is only for the rich. And I absolutely agree that we don't mind paying them a lousy buck an hour to work sixteen hours a day, growing our food and building our computers. But adequate health care? That's where we draw the line.
posted on December 16, 2002 12:56:21 AM new
profe51,
You have again scooted around your own issue by ignoring the fact that those monies 'billions waved in the face' could be used to resolve problems incurred in Mexico by Mexico as a result of the "invasion" by US maquiladoras. Mexico, instead of saying "no thanks, we can take care of our own without your cash" (your line) has said instead "give me your cash and take care of our own too".
Isn't that having your cake and eating it too? How nice for the poor Mexicans! Except for the poor Mexicans.
It is an internal Mexican issue. Not the fault of the U.S. NAFTA was not imposed - Mexico lathered at the idea of it. Now through whatever graft and high crime there are problems in health care at the border. They are shared problems requiring shared solution and nothing here has shown that the Mexican government has done it's part to resolve them.
Now, before you go off in another of your ridiculous bolding rages let me say that I did not suggest that sick mexicans be shot here I only posited a scenario which would force the care in and by Mexico of those patients now sent north. Once treated the word cannot would no longer be applicable, eh? LOL!
posted on December 16, 2002 04:32:46 AM new
I bolded three words for emphasis..that hardly qualifies as a rage!
I haven't scooted around any issues here, unless the definition of scooting around is failing to agree with krs.I have stated my opinion and the reasons for it.The bottom line for you is, everything is Mexico's fault. The US has absolutely nothing to do with any cross border problems. As I said earlier, that is a simplistic view of a very complicated set of issues.
posted on December 16, 2002 07:16:12 AM new
How did you miss the phrase "They are shared problems requiring shared solution" in the post immediately above your last?
I recognise the ease of falling into a sympathetic stance concerning the people of Mexico, particularly the peasantry away from the borders. I actually lived in the country for more than a year and still have an interest in a home at one of the minor beach resorts on the penninsula. but that ease, that sense of caring that is so much like that of a pet owner to a pet, can work as a cloud which enshrouds one's view of the political realities which surround a person.
The plain fact is that Mexico took U.S. dollars in exchange for all of the troubles that were brought to bear by NAFTA arrangements. Those dollars come from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. They took the money, billions of dollars as you said, and CANNOT use some of it to care for their resulting ill? That's unacceptable.
You've complained repeatedly about environmental laws and worker conditions. Who enforces such laws in Mexico? It's not U.S. agencies is it? Of course not. The factories are on Mexican soil and are then Mexican factories regardless their ownership. Do we complain to Japan if things are awry at the Honda factory in Ohio? No, our U.S. agencies act to correct the wrongs there (or they did before bush) because the factory is on U.S. soil.
posted on December 16, 2002 08:19:41 AM new
My opinion...Lock up the boarders.
From all I've read the damage that is being done to US interests from our southern neighbors is at the expense of US taxpayers and citizens here, especially those states that boarder Mexico. If hospitals are shutting down [as has been reported many still may] and our own citizens can't be properly taken care of FIRST, then this is wrong, IMO.
