“I'm being denied life”
"Done vida" - Donate life, says the bracelet Jorge Mariscal wears as he gets dialysis.
The 24-year-old had only one kidney until last December and the procedure helped keep him alive. His prognosis was grim because as an uninsured, undocumented immigrant born in Mexico he was ineligible to be placed on the organ transplant list.
In the Windy City, 50 percent of non-citizens are like Mariscal and have no health insurance. He is just one of millions of undocumented immigrants whose legal status keeps them from having access to health care.
Jorge Mariscal talks about getting access to health care.
In the waiting room
In 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law a major overhaul of the country’s healthcare system: the Affordable Healthcare Act. This legislation was supposed to provide insurance options for millions of Americans, expanding Medicaid to low-income adults and providing tax credits for health care.
But the new law excluded the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country, including Mariscal.
For immigrants like Mariscal, having access to insurance is a matter of life and death. If he was living in Cook County legally, he would be one of the estimated 341,063 people newly eligible for Medicaid.
Mariscal is now struggling to pay for life-saving prescriptions.
By the numbers
When health care becomes dire somebody always pays. In Chicago, the Cook County Health and Hospital Systems’s John H. Stroger Hospital carries the brunt of the burden to provide care to the uninsured.
$419m The cost to Stroger to treat uninsured in 2009.
137,919 People came through Stroger’s doors for emergency care in 2009.
$1,178 Average cost per emergency room visit for uninsured.
Health care for non-citizens in Chicago
Source: 2011 PUMS data (U.S. Census bureau)
Note: Non-citizens include legal residents and visa-holders. Non-citizens under 18 are not included because they qualify for the All Kids insurance program in Illinois.
A rare case
Many of those undocumented and without insurance could easily fall into the predicament that Mariscal found himself in last year. With a deteriorating quality of life and no hospitals in Chicago willing to put him on their transplant list, Mariscal’s church community went on a hunger strike.
They eventually pressured Loyola University Medical Center to admit Mariscal; his mother offered one of her kidneys. The young patient was given a new lease on life - despite the health care barriers that so many undocumented immigrants face.
Mariscal now depends on donations from a pharmaceutical company, secured by Loyola University Medical Center, to pay for his life-saving prescriptions.
Many undocumented immigrants are not as lucky. Most don’t have health insurance. They often have to pay out of pocket for care or go untreated.
Looking into the future
"If they didn't listen to us, we would have kept fighting... I would not [have] been able to live a normal life without a new kidney." - Jorge Mariscal
Credits
Developed for Chicago Migrahack 2013 by Los Almighty Windy City Data Hustlers.
- Reporting: Yana Kunichoff and Maria Zamudio
- Photography and audio: Lucio Villa
- Web development: David Eads and Wilberto Morales