Arizona hospital stuck with $20M bill from treating migrants
Yuma Regional Medical President Dr. Robert Transchel on how massive illegal immigration has burdened the hospital system
An Arizona border hospital has been left with $20 million in unpaid medial services from the massive influx of illegal immigrants over the past six months.
Yuma Regional Medical President Dr. Robert Transchel joined "Fox & Friends" Friday to discuss how the migrant crisis has burdened hospitals as experts warn the end of Title 42 will escalate border crossings.
Transchel said anyone coming to the hospital receives the "same level of medical care" regardless of immigration status, including surgeries and intensive care.
"People always think they're coming in with coughs and colds, but that's not really the case," Transchel said. "You have individuals come in that need dialysis, that need heart surgery, that need cardiac catheterization. We've had women come into our labor and delivery unit that have delivered infants that need to be in the neonatal ICU for sometimes months at a time."
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Additionally, Transchel said the hospital has been treating a slew of chronic illnesses left unattended.
As his hospital is burdened with the costs, Transchel said state and federal officials are "sympathetic," but "nobody is offering a payer source for these individuals."
"It's an unsustainable business model to have your expenses increased by an external entity consistently and increasingly without any concomitant revenue source," he said.
Transchel told co-host Will Cain that the billing issues come down to the hospital not being able to track down patients after they are treated.
Immigrants wait to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing the border from Mexico, with the U.S.-Mexico border barrier in the background, on Aug. 6, 2022 in Yuma, Arizona. (Photo by Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
"We don't know where the migrants are going to end up. We don't know where they go. We don't know if the name is correct. And we just don't know any of these things," he said.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., chimed in on the cost of the border crisis, Friday, pointing the finger at the Biden administration's inaction and slamming the $1.7 trillion spending bill's failure to address the issue.
"President Biden doesn't care about that because he knows the solution is closing the border, and he doesn't want to," Scalise said on "Fox & Friends."
"This is something that could be and should be addressed in the government funding bill. And it's not. In fact, this omnibus that's coming up today actually makes it harder to secure our border. No new funding for our Border Patrol agents, but they actually give money to foreign countries to secure their border and other parts of the world. This is insanity."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have experienced more than 500,000 migrant encounters since Oct. 1, sources tell Fox News.
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The total migrant encounters reached 575,409 as of Dec. 22, Fox News’ Griff Jenkins reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The figure comes as the Biden administration has not yet reported an official number of migrant encounters, despite being more than 23 days into December. Experts anticipate border encounters for the month of November to be over 200,000, or near that of the record-setting October sum.
Fox News' Lawrence Richard and Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.
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