NPR for North Texas
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Tarrant County Struggles with Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants

By Sujata Dand, KERA reporter

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-465185.mp3

Tarrant County Struggles with Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants

Dallas, TX –

Dr. Alberto Flores, Clinica Guadalupe: She comes with all of these problems, and she doesn't know what it is. She doesn't know if it's diabetes, because her parents have it, or if it's depression.

Sujata Dand, KERA Reporter: This is the first time Sanjuana has seen a doctor since she had her child five years ago. Lately, she hasn't been feeling well. Not knowing where to go, friends told her about Clinica Guadalupe - run by Spanish speaking physician- Dr. Alberto Flores.

Flores: So we check her blood sugar, real quick with just a finger stick, and she has very high blood sugar - 417. The normal is 80 to 110. How long has she been running with 417, I don't know. If it's been years, she has already done damage to her kidneys, her heart, everything else. Those are things that unfortunately I see here all of the time.

Dand: Census figures indicate there are about 180,000 immigrants in Tarrant County, making up about 13% of the population. Dr. Flores started serving this community when he worked on a contract basis with different hospitals in Fort Worth. He was often asked to do more than he could.

Flores: When they saw me speaking to some of the patients that were Spanish-speaking in the hospital, they would always ask me where my clinic was. And so I opened up this place in the Northside because I knew there was a big need.

Dand: That's because for most of the last decade, the county's hospital system, John Peter Smith, has refused undocumented adults and children charity medications and clinical care except in emergencies. Two years ago, the Texas legislature gave counties the option to pay for non-emergency care for illegal residents. JPS tried that for six months. It wound up costing Tarrant county taxpayers around seven million dollars. JPS managers declined to talk to us about their policy.

Roy Brooks, Tarrant County Commissioner: It is a complicated issue, but at rock bottom the issue is money.

Dand: Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brooks is the liaison to the hospital district.

Brooks: There is some concern about whether or not the public would be willing to suffer a property tax increase to cover the cost of that care.

Dand: County commissioners have not increased the hospital district tax rate that partly funds JPS in four years. Commissioner Brooks believes it's not right for patients like Sanjuana to suffer, and it's not smart fiscal policy for the hospital when a person eventually requires care. JPS has an above-average hospital stay for patients. Dr. Flores believes that's because people are coming into the ER sicker.

Flores: I wish everybody would do - like you say - the preventive treatment once a year. Maybe we could capture a lot of things before later on you become blind, you need amputations or strokes, which still cost the county here a lot of money.

Dand: Commissioner Brooks, like the other Tarrant County Commissioners, believes the federal and state governments are putting too much pressure on the counties.

Brooks: It's not a local issue. The federal government needs to step up to the plate, number one with immigration policy and number two with health care expenses in general both for citizens and non-citizens, for the documented and undocumented. Health care is a federal problem, not a local one.

John Cornyn, U.S. Senator: I think responsible leadership means we have to propose ideas, we have to have public debate, raise the level of public education and awareness and try to achieve some consensus.

Dand: In 2001, as Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn sided with John Peter Smith, ruling it was illegal for counties to use local taxes to treat undocumented immigrants. Today as a U.S. Senator, he sees things differently.

Cornyn: The law was the Texas legislature had not provided for preventive care for undocumented immigrants. And so I did my job at that time as an attorney general - saying what the law was. But, I think as a legislator, now as a senator - I think a better solution is not to deny people access to preventive care when it costs a whole lot more to treat them when they go to the emergency room.

Dand: The senator has proposed legislation supporting President Bush's temporary worker program - that would offer legal status to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States.

Cornyn: I don't think you can build a wall high enough or wide enough to keep people out of this country that have no hope or no opportunity where they live, and so what I think we need to do is look for innovative solutions to address the reality.

Dand: If Cornyn's bill passes, John Peter Smith would be responsible for taking care of more people, simply because there would be more legal immigrants. And, while the senator is talking about health care in immigration sub-committees, none of the federal proposals on the table address who will pay for those costs. For KERA 90.1, I'm Sujata Dand.

 

Email Sujata Dand about this story.

 

As KERA continues to look at health care stories, we encourage you to take a look at our health care discussion guide available online at www.kera.org/lifeinthebalance. This guide is designed to help elevate conversations about health care in your communities. With the help of Texas Forums, over the next six months, we will be listening to the feedback from these conversations and will make your voice part of our ongoing reports.

And for more coverage of local governance issues, visit KERA's Voter's Voice page.