Undocumented People in the US Can Donate But Not Receive Organs Viji Sundaram - New America Media
go to original December 6, 2014

Olga (far left) with her three children. (Viji Sundaram)

SAN PABLO, Calif. – Without treatment to replace her failing kidneys, Olga knows she will die. But her undocumented status disqualifies her from getting on the organ transplant list, endangering her life.

...An oddity in the U.S. health care system requires that federal Medicare cover all patients with end-stage renal disease, regardless of their age, for dialysis and organ transplantation. The exception is undocumented immigrants. But low-income undocumented patients can receive emergency care for which hospitals are reimbursed by the federal-state funded insurance program for low-income people called Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California). Olga is lucky that California, like New York and North Carolina, defines the outpatient dialysis she receives as “emergency care.”

Last year, following protests by 14 undocumented patients in critical need of organ transplants, two Chicago-area hospitals agreed to put undocumented patients in need of organ transplants on the wait list.

Even if Olga could get on the kidney transplant list, she would likely have to wait six to 10 years to get a transplant in the San Francisco Bay Area because there is a greater demand for kidneys here than there are donors, Scandling said. In the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest, by contrast, the wait time is between one and three years.

...Laura Lopez, executive director of Street Level Health Project, an Oakland-based non-profit that helps immigrants get access to health care and other services, believes that California should provide health care for all of its residents. She supports democratic Sen. Ricardo Lara’s Health Care For All bill.

“People shouldn’t have to go back to their homeland to die because they can’t get health care in the U.S.,” Lopez asserted.

Read the whole story at New America Media

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