Fascinating: Immigrants Deported by U.S. Hospitals -- Either do medical repatriations or "we're unable to provide adequate care for our own citizens."

From The New York Times:

Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance. Medicaid does not cover long-term care for illegal immigrants, or for newly arrived legal immigrants, creating a quandary for hospitals, which are obligated by federal regulation to arrange post-hospital care for patients who need it.

American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane.

Hospital administrators view these cases as costly, burdensome patient transfers that force them to shoulder responsibility for the dysfunctional immigration and health-care systems. In many cases, they say, the only alternative to repatriations is keeping patients indefinitely in acute-care hospitals.

“What that does for us, it puts a strain on our system, where we’re unable to provide adequate care for our own citizens,” said Alan B. Kelly, vice president of Scottsdale Healthcare in Arizona. “A full bed is a full bed.”

[T]he government does not finance post-hospital care for illegal immigrants, for temporary legal immigrants or for legal residents with less than five years in the United States. (California and New York City are notable exceptions; Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, spends $20 million a year on long-term care for illegal immigrants, as does the Health and Hospitals Corporation of New York City.)