covering illegal imigrants

Hospitals are required to screen and treat all those who arrive at their emergency rooms. But they receive only partial compensation for illegal immigrants, through emergency Medicaid and, for the last few years, through Section 1011 of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, a program that expired in October. That partial coverage ends when the patient is stabilized.

But hospitals are also required to discharge safely patients who need continuing care, leading to their quandary: they generally cannot find nursing homes to accept illegal immigrants, or legal ones with less than five years' residency, because long-term care is not covered by emergency Medicaid.