A Chicago hospital is preparing to send a 30-year-old patient back to . Francisco Pantaleon, who is in this country illegally, had a brain hemorrhage last month and is in a coma at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

The hospital says his immediate consents to returning him to his home country, but Pantaleon’s sister and cousin have retained a lawyer to fight the hospital. The Chicago Tribune has the story.

The practice of hospital deporting immigrants has been in the public eye lately — the New York Times had a big piece on the subject earlier this month.

Hospitals are obliged to arrange for patients’ post-hospital care, and Medicaid doesn’t cover long-term care for illegal immigrants.

“It’s important to make sure that hospitals aren’t permitted to dump patients on an international level when they can’t do it on a local level,” a lawyer working with Pantaleon’s sister and cousin told the Trib.

Pantaleon, who has been in this country for 11 years, is uninsured and was working at a carwash, the article says. Officials at the hospital say he’s unlikely to recover from his coma, and they’ve arranged to transfer him to a hospital in Acapulco, .

“We can’t arrange long-term care here, so we try to do the best we can in the country of origin,” the hospital’s chief medical officer at told the Trib.

Health Blog : Illegal Immigrant in a Coma Set to Be Deported By Hospital



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