[lit-ideas] Re: A Possibly Very Good Idea
- From: Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:12:12 -0700
Eric wrote, re rare diseases (eg, malaria):
"According to a clinician friend, it's increasingly commonplace for both
documented and undocumented immigrants brand spanking new to the country to
show up in Emergency
Rooms for treatment. If this is a trend, it should be dealt
with as a trend, rather than ignored out of political
correctness."
ck: As you put it here, it is a public health issue, specifically in the US,
once the person is in this country. However, the resurgence of common
diseases (malaria certainly isn't rare) in the US, as well as so-called
"poverty diseases," also more commonly found among new immigrants and their
neighborhoods, are also showing up in huge numbers. Ask your clinician
friend about the extremely high incidence of asthma, especially among
children, in the US. Or bed bugs and lice. Or simple infections turned
septic for lack of time to sit in that emergency room--and lack of awareness
of how serious seemingly ordinary illnesses may become. Ask your friend
about the outrageous resurgence of tuberculosis and pneumonia in poor people
(and neighborhoods) in the US.
When you talk about new immigrants "bringing in" illnesses, unless racism is
your guiding light, you're talking about diseases that thrive in poverty and
close quarters, where there's little or no medical care. That is definitely
the situation for migrant workers in the Central Valley, for instance--and
the lack of doctors here is due to doctors opting out of Medicaid, which
reimburses MDs at ridiculously low rates.
But you think that these same people would be served--and these diseases
controlled better--if MDs were trained on a ship. Okay, I'll go along with
that, since training institutions are more likely to accept Medicaid
recipients. Have you figured out how to get the sick kids over to the coast,
some three hours away? Should be easy, but it's not, especially with gas
costs, plus the cost to parents of taking a full day off from work so a
child can be seen by a physician. Still, three hours' drive can be done. But
what about kids in Ohio? Michigan? Minnesota? Immigrant and poor communities
abound throughout the US.
Or is hypothetical medical fleet intended primarily as a hospital ship in
case of outside attack?
Carol
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