4um: Moral dilemma. Would you deport his kid back to Mexico w/o medical care?

LOS ANGELES - Ana Puente was an infant with a liver disorder when her aunt brought her illegally to the United States to seek medical care. She underwent two liver transplants at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state.

But when Puente turned 21 in June, she aged out of her state-funded health insurance and the ability to continue treatment at UCLA.

This year, her liver began failing again and she was hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center, affiliated with the University of Southern California. In her Medi-Cal application, a USC doctor wrote, "Her current clinical course is irreversible, progressive and will lead to death without another liver transplant." The application was denied.

The county gave her medication but does not have the resources to perform transplants.

Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified US Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full coverage through Medi-Cal, the state health services assistance program for the poor. Puente did so, her benefits were restored, and she is awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.

Puente's case highlights two controversial issues: Should illegal immigrants receive liver transplants in the United States and should taxpayers pick up the cost?

The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Donor livers are in scarce supply. In California, nearly 3,700 people are on a waiting list for livers, according to the network. Last year, more than 90 percent were given to US citizens.

Donor livers generally are allocated through a geographic-based distribution system on the basis of how sick the patients are and how long they have been on the transplant waiting list. Immigration status does not play a role in allocating organs. But some people say that it should.

"All transplants are about rationing," said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. "I just don't think the public ought to be funding any kind of benefits for people who are breaking the law."

Larry Gonzalez, a US citizen who has hepatitis C, has known for a decade that he needs a new liver but was placed on the transplant waiting list only last week.

"Why do we have to get in line behind immigrants, foreigners, when we have enough people here to fill the hospitals?" said Gonzalez, 54, who lives in Ventura.

But Dr. Michael Shapiro, vice chairman of the ethics committee for the organ sharing network, said illegal immigrants have just as much right to receive organ transplants as US citizens. He said it is likely that more illegal immigrants donate organs than receive them. "People are people, and when you make an incision in an organ donor, you don't find little American flags planted on their organs," Shapiro said.

Illegal immigrant children with certain severe, chronic illnesses are eligible for funding under a state program. But the coverage ends when they turn 21.

State health officials said California law is designed so there is no gap in coverage, so children move seamlessly from state-funded treatment to county care. But that doesn't always happen. When they become adults, patients like Puente often must switch doctors and hospitals and might lose access to necessary medical care.

That break can be life-threatening. "It doesn't matter if I'm undocumented," Puente said. "They should take care of me at UCLA for the rest of my life because I've been there since I was a baby."

I have leukemia so I shouldn't donate. But I am willing to keep quiet and tattoo a Mexican flag on

"People are people, and when you make an incision in an organ donor, you don't find little American flags planted on their organs," Shapiro said.

Actually, many blacks cannot accept organs from any white; blacks are also the least likely to donate.

Q: Why will Obama make a great American President?
A: He's the only candidate with menagerial talent.

Complications hit about one-third of people who donate part of their livers for transplantation, raising questions about a surgery once viewed as the solution to a critical shortage of organs...

Live-donor liver transplants, which emerged in the early part of the decade as a way to stop people from dying on waiting lists, have come under scrutiny in recent months. At issue is whether perfectly healthy donors should be put at risk, regardless of their willingness to help a loved one.

News of the study, expected to be published in a scientific journal later this year, emerged after the abrupt resignation of Dr. Amadeo Marcos, UPMC's chief of transplantation since 2004. Marcos resigned five days before the Tribune-Review published the results of a four-month investigation showing that UPMC and other programs perform liver transplants when patients don't need them.

Across the nation, live-donor liver surgeries have dropped by almost half, to 267 last year from 522 in 2001, as surgeons learn more about donor complications that in extreme cases have been fatal.

Those include the 1999 death of Danny Boone at the University of North Carolina and the 2002 death of Mike Hurewitz at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Their widows are advocates for donors and say the transplant community is moving too slowly in its efforts to tell donors about potential risks.

"We were never told about the risks," said Rhonda Boone of Burnsville, N.C., whose husband donated part of his liver to his brother. "There is no true informed consent."

Rhonda Boone has spent nine years trying to ensure that transplant centers tell donors what to expect from a surgery they don't need but receive in order to help someone who is ill.

Her friend, Vickie Hurewitz of Albany, N.Y., whose husband of 12 years died after donating part of his liver to his brother, said donors deserve all the information they can get and there should be stricter selection criteria.

"They just want the organ, in my opinion," she said. "They're not concerned about the donor."

Q: Why will Obama make a great American President?
A: He's the only candidate with menagerial talent.

Rejected by the immune system. Blood type is the biggest factor. A universal problem, but there are ethnic patterns, just as there are ethnic patterns in blood type.

When you need an organ, nobody says "Dispense with that tissue-matching doc: We're all brothers beneath the skin." Best matches are not only within-race, but within the same ethnic group within a race.

Q: Why will Obama make a great American President?
A: He's the only candidate with menagerial talent.

Thanks for all the information - I certainly had no clue that you could have a portion of your liver lopped off and donated: I thought that it was an 'all or nothing' type deal.

I feel bad for the girl. She didn't come here illegally by her own choice, her aunt brought her. If, and only if, the doctors think another transplant would make a long-term difference for this girl then I think she should get another one. But if the doctors think her chances of rejecting it again are high, then there is really no sense in trying again.

When one learns about basic magic, as in "being a magician" who performs on stage and does illusions to entertain people, one of the first things you learn about is the art of "misdirection". Waving one hand around to draw attention to it while your other hand does something to facilitate the illusion you are performing.

This story strikes me as a classic case of corporate media misdirection. Sure, this story is outrageous, yes the taxpayers are being ripped off, yes she should be deported immediately and Mexico should be compelled to take care of her. No argument there.

But now let's compare the total tax burden this person represents as compared to the wholesale looting of our treasury by various Wall Street firms. The fact that the discount window has been opened up for Wall Street financial firms who are raiding our treasury for TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A DAY. Yes, that's right, TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. A. DAY.

Maybe we could take a look at what our glorious misadventure in Iraq is costing us? Oh, I'm sure it's only cost about THREE TRILLION DOLLARS so far. Hey, how about that announcement Donald Rumsfeld made late in the afternoon of September 10, 2001? The one where he announced the Pentagon could not account for 2.1 TRILLION, yes, TRILLION dollars of taxpayer money?

Then add in the "No Bid" contracts that have been handed out to Halliburton and Blackwater and other well-connected cronies of our glorious corporatist military/media/government/corporate complex. Billions upon billions, trillions upon trillions, as corporate pigs squeal and oink and wallow in their ill- gotten gains stolen from the sweat and labor of the rest of us.

But anyways, go ahead and get upset and huff and puff about the outrage of this girl and taxpayers being compelled to pay for her care. Yes, it's wrong, I won't argue that. But it's kind of like getting upset over a hangnail when someone just cut your heart out and is eating it in front of your face, and laughing at you while doing so.

OK, but why do we have to renew it without once again demonstrating a minimum amount of competence?

Treat the mexicons like they treat us: toss their sorry asses out in the street if they can't pay in advance. Fuck the illegals, they're leeches....

"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states." Charles Dickens, 1862

It amazes me that The Press still finds it profitable to print these "You Amercans Are Horrible For Not Taking Care Of Unwanted Mexicans" stories planted by functionaries of the Mexican government. It would be all the more amusing if more people saw through this ugly rouse.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot

Whatever the states want afa demonstrating competence. After 75? I'd be agreeable to testing on a regular basis.

Driving is a privilege to be awarded by the spoils system, now back into the field with both of you.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot

The Indian caste system always appealed to me especially since I'm no longer a gutter snipe.

yes, but multiply her by tens of millions. granted, most illegals don't need transplants, but we shouldn't be paying for even a hangnail of an illegal.

Very true, but also keep in mind why they are here in the first place: Corporatist legislation like NAFTA that made it impossible for them to make a living in their home countries, and Corporatist intervention in our legal process that virtually eliminated prosecution of those who hire these illegals. Getting upset with the illegals here is like getting upset with the bullets that hit you in a firefight, and refusing to become angry with the bastards firing the guns at you.

There is a man at work awaiting a transplant..he deteriorates every day. He would have been marching in S Cen LA (the vid you posted) if he lived there and could have walked...Throw her over the fence....and simultaneously HANG THE BASTARDS IN DC FROM THE LAMPOSTS. Every single damned traitor that voted for amnesty, SHAFTA, GOTYA, who now fails to support deportation...you get the picture. ..and SEIZE ASSETS FROM THOSE HIRING ILLEGALS and shut down the biz..

"Corporation: An entity created for the legal protection of its human parasites, whose sole purpose is profit and self-perpetuation." © IndieTx

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

The money that's spent on this treatment could be spent on manufacturing more depleted uranium weapons to be used on those innocent Iraqi child suicide bombers or paying the contractors that are in charge of interrogating the children who have information on their parents. Or better yet, give the money to the child protection workers and prosecutors that are paid to make sure the sex slave trade is well stocked.

Eleventy-billion stories about Americans going to a mexicon hospital and they're just itching to roll their ass out into the street if they don't pay up before they do anything to help them. Yet they want us to give illegals transplants/birthing of their little shits/heart surgery/TB treatment/etc. with no plan of ever paying us back.

"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states." Charles Dickens, 1862

Only DC politicians get FREE medical care....and a limo to the hospital and doc's office...free medical care of the best quality in fact...that I am aware of...Hang 'em all.

"Corporation: An entity created for the legal protection of its human parasites, whose sole purpose is profit and self-perpetuation." © IndieTx

The question is should Americans pick up the tab for medical bills Illegal Aliens incur.

It's ironic that people are quick to complain about this sort of 'tragedy' we are discussing above and completely ignore infinitely greater ones such as the ones I listed. Depleted Uranium (funded by taxes), Torture (funded by taxes) Child sex slavery (funded by taxes) etc.

'Americans first, everyone else second' is not an expression I want to look forward to hearing repeated.

The only answer to dilemmas like this is a secure border and prosecution of employers.

I cling to hope of a 50 state repudiation of the traitorous, neocon Plutocrat Party

The wars our government wages, and the casualties it causes, are an abstract blur to the sheeple. Whereas a long line at the ER related to illegal aliens receiving "free" care at the expense of the tax payer is a reality the average Joe can relate to. One problem is next door to us and visible, while the other is thousands of miles away, and a mere blurb on the news.

Yes it is. A Kevorkian exit, for me, is a better choice than existence as a human zucchini.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)