Via the Associated Press,

The University of Texas Medical Branch may stop offering cancer care to indigent and undocumented immigrants in order to cut costs.

The UTMB set aside about $12 million in this year's $1.4 billion annual budget to treat indigent cancer patients, but that isn't enough to meet demand, said Karen Sexton, vice president and CEO of hospitals and clinics at the medical branch.

The medical branch laid off 381 employees last year as it dealt with inflation, state funding cuts and the growing number of Texans without health insurance.

Its Cancer Patients Acceptance Committee has been studying the issue of turning away undocumented immigrants to alleviate some of the financial pressure, but the possibility raises obvious ethical questions, Sexton said.

Nobody, whether they're here legally or not, whether they have the money to pay for it out of pocket or not, should be denied emergency care. We're not going to let people die in the street in this country because they don't have medical insurance or deep pockets.

However, American hospitals have no more of an ethical obligation to give longer term care to illegals than hospitals in other countries have an obligation to give long term care to the people reading Right Wing News in the states right now.

If you're an illegal alien and you need long-term cancer care, you should either have to pay for it or you should go back to your home country to get it.

We may be a rich country, but we don't have unlimited resources. In this case, Americans are actually losing their jobs because all the bills can't be paid and there is a limited amount of money to care for indigent people, both legal and illegal. Since that's the case, it's pretty clear that if someone has to lose, it should be the illegal aliens since they're not supposed to be in this country in the first place.

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