For three days, the staff of an Orlando medical clinic encouraged a woman with abdominal pain who called the triage line to go to the hospital. She resisted, scared of a 2023 Florida law that required hospitals to ask whether a patient was in the U.S. with legal permission.
The clinic had worked hard to explain the limits of the law, which was part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ sweeping package of tighter immigration policies. The clinic posted signs and counseled patients: They could decline to answer the question and still receive care. Individual, identifying information wouldn’t be reported to the state.
“We tried to explain this again and again and again, but the fear was real,” Grace Medical Home CEO Stephanie Garris said, adding the woman finally did go to an emergency room for treatment.
Conservatives: This is how the zombie apocalypse starts… With one person refusing to let medical professionals know about their problem.
I’d use a very real scenario of immigrants and “merely visiting” foreigners who get sick spreading any given disease (e.g. How do you think we ended up with Zika in Florida?) but I know conservatives aren’t interested in reality. Even JD Vance knows that in order to get conservatives attention you need to promote fiction.