Cook County Dems to Taxpayers: You Pay for Illegal Alien Health Care

All four Democratic candidates for Cook County Board President appeared together this past Sunday in a West Rogers Park forum, moderated by WTTW's Carol Marin.

The event was sponsored by a new group calling itself, "The Rogers Park Organization," and it printed handbills announcing the event on paper which showed the computer signature of the local Alderman, Berny Stone's, campaign organization.

Before a predominately Jewish audience at Temple Menorah on California Ave., the four Democratic hopefuls spouted the predictable political pablum and then answered questions written by the audience and submitted to Marin for review.

Most were about the well publicized scandals surrounding the four.

County Board President, Todd Stroger lamely defended his nepotistic hiring practices saying that he only had two relatives on the County payroll and that he couldn't order them not to take 6 figure county jobs.

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle said that she hadn't taken any more money from shady developer, Tony Rezko, since she found out he was letting his properties run down in her ward.

County Clerk, Dorothy Brown said that funds from her "blue jean day" shakedown of her employees all went to charity.

Water Reclamation Board President, Terry O'Brien said that he had no patronage employees and had no control over the stink that wafts down Birchwood Ave. from his water treatment plant and wondered why Preckwinkle had voted to raise her own pay four times.

With the scandal explanations out of the way, Marin, to her great credit, passed along to them a substantive and seldom asked question.

She asked them: "Do you believe that Cook County taxpayers should be expected to underwrite the costs of non-emergency medical treatment for illegal aliens at Cook County's Stroger Hospital.?"

Without so much as batting an eyelash, all four essentially said yes.

(Are you taking notes, Roger Keats?)

The question is an important one given the Cook county's woeful fiscal situation. It's a salient one given the county's highest in the nation sales taxes and the new 5% property tax increases that county homeowners are now getting in the mail.

Due to the strictures of political correctness and the desire of these four candidates to pander to the Latino vote, it is a seldom asked question.

But it is the 800 pound elephant in the room.

Back in 2007, the chief of Cook County medical services, Dr. Robert Simon, was almost run out of town on a rail when he dared to testify that uncollectable services to illegal aliens were a major cause of the county medical system's budgetary problems.

"The taxpayers are paying the entire bill for all these undocumented aliens and our primary concern should be for the taxpayers and citizens," he told the Daily Southtown.
He said that the county was providing long-term care to nearly 30 illegal aliens at its Oak Forest Hospital facility at a cost of $800 per patient per day.

By my calculations, that alone comes to almost $3 million in services to just these few indigent people, who aren't legitimately even supposed to be in the country.

And immigration control activist, Rosanna Pulido, said at the time that nearly 40% of all services rendered by the Cook county medical system went for the illegal alien population.

But in that same year, 2007, the County Board voted to make Cook a "sanctuary county," meaning that hospital admissions personnel were then precluded from even inquiring as to the legality of one's presence in the country.

So we really can't know how massive the problem may be. But Dr. Simon, the man with day-to-day oversight of the system sure thought it was significant.

So the bottom line is -- anyone, from anywhere on the face of the earth -- if they can just somehow manage to get to 1900 W. Polk in Chicago -- can receive 1st world medical care, courtesy of the taxpayers of Cook County.

It kind of makes Stroger Hospital the new Lourdes of the USA.

Maybe Daley's office of tourism can cash in by promoting it as such and by sponsoring international pilgrimages to this great healing shrine.

And I want the concession for sales of the sacred statues and relics of patron Saints Stroger, Preckwinckle, Brown and O'Brien. I will sell them to the hordes of pilgrims as they get off the bus on Polk Street.