{"id":23413,"date":"2019-10-23T16:59:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T23:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=23413"},"modified":"2022-10-22T12:52:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T19:52:22","slug":"the-heartless-and-immigrants-blindness-about-the-reality-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=23413","title":{"rendered":"The heartless and immigrants: Blindness about the reality of healthcare in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Let\u2019s examine what the heartless are doing. From his position of power, Trump made a de facto decision, issuing\u00a0a proclamation<\/a>,\u00a0on October 4, 2019, that immigrants coming to the United States will have to purchase private health insurance or prove that they have enough funds to pay for their healthcare cost. Taking effect on November 3, this will concern visa applications.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Trump\u2019s position about making immigrants and asylum seekers pay for their health insurance is based on the Republicans\u2019 view of discriminating between who lives and who dies, which life is valued and which life is not. He tweeted, \u201cLet\u2019s take care of our own instead of paying for the undocumented.\u201d But that\u2019s wrong. Let\u2019s look at the numbers of Americans who have been neglected by the health care system: the poor, African Americans, youth, the aged, people who work multiple jobs without benefits, the homeless, the unemployed and precaritized women. Since the health care system in the US is based on private policies that are profit driven, health itself is the casualty. What\u2019s more, there is a false notion harbored by many Republicans that the United States would receive an influx of\u00a0medical tourists<\/a>\u00a0if we offered healthcare to all immigrants entering the country. The reality is that the outrageous health costs force many American citizens to seek care as medical tourists in countries like Mexico, Thailand, India and many others.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So why pit immigrants against citizens and residents?\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Trump\u2019s decision fuels the anti-immigrant sentiment and rhetoric that have permitted the most cruel actions against people looking for safer ground. Between 2016 and 2019 under the Trump administration the number of immigrant deaths detention centers has increased due to ICE\u2019s poor medical standards. As\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>\u00a0has described:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cICE has proven unable or unwilling to provide adequately for the health and safety of the people it detains.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0These detention centers are expanding across the country. This part of the business of controlling bodies at the border is based on violence, humiliation and redefinition of bodies, as children are put in cages and babies are snatched from their mothers\u2019 arms. Achille Mbemb\u00e9 has developed the concept of borderization to address the treatment that has been randomly applied to undesirables, to immigrants\u2019 bodies, in our world of quantification and digitalization, leading to division between immigrants and citizens who are as a result oblivious to their own deprivation of rights and health care.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It is crucial to note the heartlessness of the Trump administration\u2019s treatments of immigrants at the border. Although ICE declares that its medical care in detention centers has in fact improved under the Trump administration and provide statistics to support their claim, many organizations including Human Rights Watch provide different detailed accounts that show the rise of immigrant deaths, children and adults, as the result of untimely and poor medical care. Meanwhile, the Trump administration seeks to\u00a0expand immigration detention center<\/a>s, which will put more people at risk.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This dehumanization of the undesirable migrants is occurring around the world. While in France, under the \u201cFight against Exclusion\u201d program the state provides free health care,\u00a0Aide Medical d\u2019Etat<\/a>\u00a0(AME), to undocumented immigrants with immediate coverage for minors, the conservatives have been calling this program into question. The Health Minister immediately declared that\u00a0this program is \u201can absolute necessity\u201d<\/a>; nonetheless, the President agreed on an audit of the program that can open it to lowering the level of coverage. France is one of the rare if not the last country to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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(Image Credit 1: Immigration Impact<\/a>) (Image Credit 2: Mitch Blunt \/ Human Rights Watch<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s examine what the heartless are doing. From his position of power, Trump made a de facto decision, issuing\u00a0a proclamation,\u00a0on October 4, 2019, that immigrants coming to the United States will have to purchase private health insurance or prove that they have enough funds to pay for their healthcare cost. Taking effect on November 3, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[880,6347,3449,1907],"class_list":["post-23413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-brigitte-marti","tag-heartless","tag-immigrants","tag-pramila-venkateswaran","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26553,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413\/revisions\/26553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}