Florida hospital gets sued after spending 3 years and $1.5 Million to care for illegal alien

By Wing Chun Geologist

This lawsuit seems pretty outrageous to me. According to AOL News, Martin Memorial Medical Center spent $1.5 Million to care for Luis Jiminez after an accident that left Jiminez paraplegic and brain damaged. The hospital saved the illegal immigrant’s life, and provided him with not only medical attention, but around the clock care for three years, only to be sued for returning Jiminez to his own country. Advocates for Jiminez are suing because the hospital refused to keep Jiminez indefinitely.

Jimenez was a Mayan Indian who was sending money home to his wife and young sons when in 2000, a drunken driver plowed into a van he was riding in, leaving him a paraplegic with the mental capability of a fourth grader. Because of his brain injury, his cousin Montejo Gaspar was made his legal guardian.

Jimenez spent nearly three years at Martin Memorial before the hospital, backed by a letter from the Guatemalan government, got a Florida judge to OK the transfer to a facility in that country. Gaspar appealed.

But without telling Jimenez’s family — and the day after Gaspar filed an emergency request to stop the hospital’s plan — Martin Memorial put Jimenez on a $30,000 charter flight home early on July 10, 2003.

Weeks later, Jimenez was released from the Guatemalan hospital and soon wound up in his aging mother’s one-room home in a remote mountain village



Jiminez’s relatives in America were perfectly happy to have an American hospital provide neverending expensive hospital care to Jiminez. After all, it wasn’t costing them anything. Hospital care is expensive, and o hospital can afford to keep someone indefinitely.

Mr. Jiminez’s immigration status put the hospital in the position of having to foot the bill (about $ 1 1/2 Million) to care for the seriously injured man because the federal government doesn’t reimburse states for services used by illegal aliens.

...under federal law, Martin Memorial was required to care for Jimenez until someone else would take him. Because of his immigration status, no one else would. But hospitals that receive Medicare reimbursements are required to provide emergency care to all patients and must provide an acceptable discharge plan once the patient is stabilized.

What happened to Mr. Jiminez is truly a tragedy, but should it entitle the illegal immigrant to expensive medical care, in America, for the rest of his life? According to some the answer is yes…after all, it’s free.