The hospitals strongly oppose being required to inquire about immigration status on ethical grounds, saying questions would discourage sick and injured people from seeking medical care. “Our mission is to take care of patients, regardless of race, ethnicity, citizenship, etc.,” American Hospital Association spokesman David Allen wrote in an e-mail.
McCain and Obama were among the 15 senators who signed a May 16 letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asking that the program be extended for two years. McCain’s home-state colleague Sen. Jon Kyl (R) led the effort.
The funding, the letter states, “is vital to our states’ healthcare safety net, helping hospitals, physicians and ambulances provide federally mandated emergency services to undocumented immigrants.” Arizona’s allocation from the illegal immigrant program for fiscal year 2008 is $44.7 million, second only to California’s $72.2 million.
“We believe the letter speaks for itself on the specific issue,” said a spokesman in McCain’s Senate office. “Sen. McCain’s view on this issue remains the same.”
Kyl championed this funding stream when Congress passed it in 2003 and was responsible for securing the money for the border counties’ study. Kyl, among the chamber’s sharpest critics of illegal immigration, nevertheless joined McCain and Kennedy in 2007 to help draft the comprehensive immigration bill that ultimately failed. He does not favor changes to the hospital reimbursement program, according to a spokesman.
The hospital funding issue is far from a major one for conservative immigration reformers, but McCain’s involvement gives it a different tenor, agreed Krikorian and Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
“It’s just one letter on one issue anyway,” Kirkorian said.
“This is not a burning issue at the moment,” Mehlman said.
It could still be trouble for McCain, Krikorian said. For immigration hawks, Krikorian said, “It’s, ‘There he goes again.’ ” The McCain-Kennedy bill included an extension of the hospital funding through fiscal 2011.
Taxpayers have a right to be upset that they are financing medical care for illegal immigrants, Mehlman contended. Moreover, hospitals are getting this money with no strings attached. “It seems rather one-sided for hospitals” because they do not have to collect and provide information about immigration status to help law enforcement agencies identify illegal immigrants, he said. “If they can [collect information] when the insurance company’s paying, why can’t they do it for the taxpayer?”
Krikorian, however, said he does not object to the federal government compensating the hospitals for treating illegal immigrants. “I would have to agree with McCain and Obama on this one,” he said. “If the federal government is going to fail in its responsibility to patrol the border, then it makes sense” to set aid money to institutions like hospitals that provide services to illegal immigrants, he said.
“Sen. Obama believes it is the responsibility of the federal government, not emergency room nurses and doctors, to enforce immigration law, and that treating those with disease, regardless of immigration status, is necessary as a matter of public health,” according to a statement issued by his Senate office. Illinois’s $10.3 million allocation for the current fiscal year is the fourth-highest among the states.
Neither Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign nor her Senate office responded to a request for comment on the hospital-funding program.
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