Target: Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas
Goal: Do not force hospitals to report the immigration status of their patients.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), over 26,000 people die in America every year due to lack of medical care access. And since the COVID-19 pandemic, a record number of Americans have delayed medical care, to the long-term detriment of their health. Texas’ governor is determined to drive these troubling numbers even higher.
Governor Greg Abbott penned an executive order mandating that all public hospitals ask patients about their immigration status and report this information to state authorities. The governor claims this move will not impact healthcare, as all states are required to provide emergency care by federal law. But he very likely is well aware that such a move will deter untold numbers of sick and perhaps dying people from receiving the help they urgently need. This political move also keeps physicians from fulfilling the highest duty of care to their patients and puts them in the untenable position of violating their patients’ trust and confidentiality.
Sign the petition below to demand this governor keep his politics out of matters involving life and death.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Governor Abbott,
Texas currently ranks 40th in healthcare access and dead last in healthcare affordability. The state’s infant mortality rates are over ten times the average. Given these numbers, do you really want to put an even greater burden on this state’s physicians and its ailing residents, by discouraging undocumented immigrants from seeking life-saving care and compromising patient-doctor confidentiality? As a critic aptly stated, doctors are not ICE agents. They are healers, and their first obligation should always be to their patients. The doctor and patient bond is crucial to effective and quality healthcare. Do not irrevocably break this relationship by forcing these healers to betray their oath for the sake of a few cheap political points.
As you have affirmed yourself, all residents of this country are entitled to emergency medical care during their most desperate times. Do you want the preventable death of even one individual on your conscience? If not, rescind this shameful executive order at once. Focus on the very real problems within Texas healthcare and stop looking for a convenient scapegoat.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Cottonbro Studio
If people would mind their own business the world might be a far better place. Politicians are famous for this. They make people more afraid of being hurt notably by hospitals but also by law enforcement. Law enforcement should not just be focused on immigrants but on those telling the stories about so called sins of immigrants. This world isn’t black and white but millions of shades of gray. Maybe that’s why the fickle, finger of fate which we point at others turns around and points at us.