The crisis—deemed the biggest economic challenge since the Great Depression—is impacting all sorts of people around the world, but for many Hispanics living in the United States this could become a life-threatening situation.
Budget constraints are forcing a number of hospitals across the country to cut back on the clinics and other free services as they struggle to avoid falling into bankruptcy.
These measures, however, are proving to be devastating to the uninsured, most of who have no other option but to rely on these services for medical treatment they can’t obtain anywhere else.
One such case was that of Monica Chavarria, an Atlanta resident whose dialysis treatment was suspended after Grady Memorial Hospital concluded that it could not continue bearing the cost of providing free medical care to illegal aliens—even if part of the burden was being carried by the tax payer.
To lessen the blow to those impacted by the measure, the highly indebted hospital offered to pay for the relocation of some of its patients to their countries of origin and to pay for the costs of the initial three months of treatment.
Left with no other option, Chavarria accepted the offer to relocate, leaving her husband and one of her sons in Atlanta, while she moved to her mother’s house in a rural community two hours away from Guadalajara, Mexico.
The money provided by the hospital, however, quickly ran out and Chavarria is now using the little money her family had saved for an eventual transplant to pay for the dialysis that is keeping here alive.
Now that her own money is also running out, Chavarria’s long term prospects look grim. Two other Grady Dialysis patients who left for Mexico have already died, and she could face the same fate unless she finds the $20,000 she needs for a transplant.
Cases like this are popping up all across the U.S. But sadly, there is not much the health care system can do at this time under the current laws and economic climate to help those under similar conditions.
Almost all 50 states of the Union are suffering under their own kind of financial crisis and being forced to cut services left and right in order to avoid running into red. The budget crisis in many states is running to such proportions that many analysts believe the federal government will eventually have to intervene to avoid the closing down of essential services.
On the other hand, many Hispanics simply don’t have access to health insurance that could help them pay for the doctor when they get sick, and this is likely to continue until legislators finally approve the Health Care Reform bill that seems to be stuck in Congress.
According to the advocacy group National Council of La Raza, more than 14 million Hispanics living in the U.S. (a significant portion of them legally), don’t have any type of health care coverage and are forced to pay for their medical care out of their own pocket or rely on the help of clinics and hospitals willing to treat them for free.
The problem being that there are fewer of them with each passing day.