Three Cheers for the US Immigration Dept!

[RugbyD]

You voluntarily don't have medical insurance, right? You MRI pricing would then reflect a non-negotiated (aka full) price. When I get home I'll check my EOB to see what mine was charged at throught BCBS. I could be wrong, but i think you can see cancer in xrays too.

Depends on what you call "voluntary". At a little over $600 per month, it's a luxury I cannot afford.

Even with your insurance numbers and all, you're still over $1,500 per MRI. Times how many people that claim to be in pain? Scary burden to lay on the taxpayers. Even moreso when the two reasons Mr. Ng was in custody was by choices he and his family made. Perfect to me would be to lay that financial burden (along with the additional costs due to the court tie up, which includes food, clothes, shelter, etc) on him and his family, but even if that was the way it went, there are still those with no family or the entire family is being deported. So that fix doesn't work and cover all the bases either.

I wouldn't expect MRIs to be thrown around like candy. At the same time I'm no expert on what qualifies as an optional or necessary use of an MRI. I'll reiterate that by taking away someone's voluntary access to medical care, the custodial party assumes some minimum level or responsibility to the detainee. I won't venture a guess as to what that level includes, but its certainly more than ignoring what should be clear signs of a problem developing over several months. Throwing painkillers at a problem until the problem goes away doesn't cut it if that's what was done.

[Madison]

I wouldn't expect MRIs to be thrown around like candy. At the same time I'm no expert on what qualifies as an optional or necessary use of an MRI. I'll reiterate that by taking away someone's voluntary access to medical care, the custodial party assumes some minimum level or responsibility to the detainee. I won't venture a guess as to what that level includes, but its certainly more than ignoring what should be clear signs of a problem developing over several months. Throwing painkillers at a problem until the problem goes away doesn't cut it if that's what was done.

No disagreement here, just trying to figure out what level of care should be provided is all.

[Art Vandelay]

...just trying to figure out what level of care should be provided is all.

I think if the government has someone in custody, they have a responsibility to at least keep them alive, no matter what kind of treatment that takes. If society deems that to be too much of a financial hardship on the tax payers, then the person should be freed to seek care on their own. If we let people waste away and die of treatable conditions without doing something about it, we're all culpable.