Liberty's Blog: Selecting Cancer Patients

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Selecting Cancer Patients

Our main medical facility here in Galveston is the University of Texas Medical Branch otherwise known as UTMB. UTMB provides Lifelite Services has a Trauma Center and has a Shriners Burn Center associated with the facilities. It is partially state funded so the indigent get services. Like most state funded institutions UTMB never seems to have enough money. Last year they had to lay off over 300 people and they got no more money this year. Although it is a state funded hospital it isn't cheap. One of the reasons UTMB is expensive is that those who pay is subsidize thpse that don't. After a while something has to give. UTMB figured it out. Cancer treatment is expensive and illegal aliens aren't paying into the system.

The University of Texas Medical Branch is considering a policy that would deny cancer care to indigent, undocumented immigrants — an unusual and controversial move for a state-funded institution.

Medical branch officials are forming the policy as they strain to stretch dwindling state dollars for uninsured patients and while illegal immigration ranks among the most divisive issues in the nation.

Turning away undocumented cancer patients undoubtedly would pull the oldest medical school west of the Mississippi into a fierce contemporary debate about the legality and fairness of treating undocumented immigrants with tax dollars when millions of uninsured legal residents can’t afford health care.

It also will force the institution to face thorny questions about simple compassion and the limits of a physician’s duty to treat the ailing.

“Certainly it’s not a decision we’re taking lightly,” said Karen Sexton, vice president and CEO of hospitals and clinics at the medical branch. “We are in the process of looking at cancer patients and the demand and the resources we have, and thinking through how to decide who gets care.”

Well they can always go North about 50 miles to one of the Houston hospitals, I'm sure they will appreciate the extra unpaid business. I hate seeing this but it is the result of a growing problem that our Federal government caused and refuses to address.