Every hospital must give immediate necessary emergency medical care. The problem comes when what is necessary can be debated. Anything other than necessary must be paid for out of pocket or with insurance.

What happens in practice is that hospitals 'write-off' care given to illegal immigrants and they actually receive better than that given to those citizens with no insurance because the hospitial knows that the emergency care is probably all that they will receive.

Here, and in most states, illegal immigrants can go down to the public health service and receive free immunizations but I must pay for mine and my daughters. In America, education up to the age of 16 is required by law and free, but immunizations are required to attend school as well, so in my opinion, immunizations must be free to all as well in order for education up to age 16 to be considered free. When I was in school, you received your shots AT SCHOOL. Everyone stood in line. Now, you must get your shots on your own and bring proof that you received all of your immunizations to school in order to attend.


>Tom,
>
>Lets get things clear and differentiate between medical care and inmediate medical care.
>I would guess that anyone, illegal or not, would get inmediate medical care. Correct ?
>
>As for medical care (GP consults, Dental, Transplant, observation, cancer treatment, simple estetic operations (eyelids), IVF, glasses or eye corrections, etc) I would guess that illegal aliens don't recieve as well as 45 million US citizens without a healthcare insurance ?
>
>Walter,