Perhaps It Would Be Fun to Actually Check Your Own Paper ...

... before getting people all riled up. The DMN's Ed Housewright, over on the Metroblog, wonders if the bond election for Parkland will be a hard sell because so many don't like the fact that Parkland treats illegal immigrants. But instead of making putting a little information out there to help clear up misconceptions, Housewright just kind of lets it hang there, like a dingleberry. And this is a disservice to readers, and to Parkland, and to anyone who might need Parkland some day. Because it's not just as simple as "Parkland treats illegal immigrants." Yes, it's true. But in leaving that statement just hanging there, you allow the unsaid to germinate as well, "and we have to pay for it." Which is only partly true. Yes, we do, but we also pay for white Betty Jo down the street when she has her baby, and she hasn't worked a day in her life, but instead spits out baby after baby about the time the state is going to tell her the last child she had is old enough for her to leave and go to work. Yet Maria, who works and whose husband works, will probably actually pay her bill. Say it ain't so? In a quick Google search to just look up articles on Parkland's policies, I found this exact subject addressed on snopes.com. In the answer, the folks at Snopes quote liberally from one periodical in particular - the Dallas Morning News. Specifically, a 2006 series of articles that compared how Parkland and Tarrant County's JPS Health Systems handled the issue of treating illegal immigrants. One interesting part of the story:

Most immigrant patients have jobs and pay taxes, through paycheck deductions or property taxes included in their rent, administrators at the Dallas and Fort Worth hospitals said. At both institutions, they have a better record of paying their bills than low-income Americans do, the administrators said.