Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is warning that rural hospitals are closing down in part due to the cost of caring for migrants who cannot pay their medical bills.
This week, multiple media outlets are using skewed “fact checks” to slam Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) for spotlighting the impact of migration on hard-pressed hospitals in rural communities.
Vance recently spoke about the pressures that rural hospitals face during a Trump campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he was asked about the closure of several hospitals and clinics in the area, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
In reply, Vance said that rural hospitals are shutting down because they are “bearing the burden of providing health care to millions of people who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with.”
“Now you might not think that rural health care access is an immigration issue. I guarantee it is an immigration issue because we’re bankrupting, bankrupting a lot of hospitals by forcing these hospitals to provide care for people who don’t have the legal right to be in our country,” the Ohio senator added.
U.S. Sen. JD Vance speaking with attendees at The People’s Convention at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan, on June 16, 2024. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
“We’ve got to stop that, kick these illegal aliens out, focus on American citizens, and we will do a lot to make the business of rural health care much more affordable,” he said. All of this, he added, can be blamed on the Harris “open borders” policies.
The issue that Vance was addressing was clearly highlighted in Florida where earlier this year, the state legislature put Senate Bill 1718 into effect, which requires hospitals to report the amount of unpaid services they deliver to illegal aliens.
Upon signing the bill into law in April, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said the legislation “gives Florida the most ambitious anti-illegal immigration laws in the country, fighting back against reckless federal government policies and ensuring the Florida taxpayers are not footing the bill for illegal immigration.”
The legislation quickly began to show just how much Florida’s hospitals are losing by treating migrants who cannot pay their bills.
With SB 1718 recording the costs to the Sunshine State in real-time, it is clear that the costs of caring for indigent illegal aliens are quickly adding up. To name just a few, according to the state’s reporting website, MyFlorida.com, Broward County has lost $43,056,022 by that time toward the unpaid medical expenses for illegal aliens. Duval had suffered a loss of $31,439, 143, Hillsborough’s loss was at $58,822,134, Orange stood at $58,328,521, and Miami-Dade had lost a whopping $231,804,144.
According to the reporting website, the estimated costs to care for illegal aliens totaled more than $566 million just by April. And that number has only gone up since.
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