You Are Paying $800 Per Day

County health chief: Fly illegals back home Think of your mother, your brother, your neighbor. Imagine that they need long-term health care. Now imagine that there is no bed available for them, because their own tax dollars - and yours, friend - are paying for luxurious, long-term care for people who broke the law to get into this country. How would you feel? Oh, you may say, people are people and we should help everyone. News flash, pal: We cannot afford to help everyone. Rich as this nation is, we do not have a giant farm full of free-range golden egg geese. This story from the March 25 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times is disturbing on several levels: - Your tax dollars are paying to support people who should be getting this kind of service from their own nations' tax dollars; - They are, in effect, being rewarded for having broken the law by entering the U.S. illegally in the first place; - They are taking away beds that may be needed by people here legally - those of us born here or who entered legally through the system; - You may one day not get a bed because someone who is here illegally has that bed. Excerpts from the Sun-Times story: Dr. Robert Simon, chief of Cook County health services, says the county should fly illegal immigrants living at Oak Forest Hospital back to the countries they came from. "We're giving luxury service in a setting like a park," Simon said in an interview Friday, referring to the acres of grass and trees on the sprawling campus. "We've got undocumented aliens that are living there like that." The hospital is home to 20 to 30 illegal immigrants who are profoundly disabled, Horacio Esparza of the Progress Center for Independent Living estimated. Esparza shows a total disregard for legal residents who have profound disabilities. Should we send legal residents with similar medical challenges to Mexico or Belize or China or any other country for treatment if a bed is not available here? "This isn't just transportation," Esparza said. "There's services. There's medical issues. They are from rural areas in their countries. There's no accessibility, no medical treatments. That's totally not acceptable." And what about legal residents "from rural areas?" The county does not receive any state or federal reimbursement for patients who are not citizens or legal residents. "What I'm saying is, our primary concern has to be to the taxpayers and the citizens," Simon said. "There are people that have been there for 10, 20 years," Simon said. "You as a citizen are paying for that at $800 a day." There is a limit to kindness. It is usually recognizable when blood starts spurting from your own veins.