-By Warner Todd Huston
ABC’s long-running medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy, featured a poor immigrant whose wife and son were “caged like animals” by evil U.S. immigration officials and a doctor who put her career and the hospital’s reputation at risk to perpetrate insurance fraud to help the foreigner.
The May 2 episode, entitled “What I Did For Love,” featured an immigrant man who entered the U.S. on a visa with his four-year-old daughter. But the girl becomes sick with an unknown illness and the immigrant, Luis (Omar Leyva), took her to the E.R., Newsbusters wrote.
The character explained to the doctors that he came to the U.S. and found a job before applying for asylum. The show blithely ignores the fact that seeking a job in the U.S. is not grounds for asylum and that, legally, would-be asylum seekers are supposed to apply for asylum before entering the U.S. and before “finding a job.”
Naturally, the episode does not note that the practice of separating children from immigrant parents began under the Barack Obama administration, nor does the show inform viewers that it is only illegals that are subject to the policy. It is likely that if Luis was in the U.S. on a legal visa, then his wife and son would also likely be coming in on a visa and would not be subject to the separation policy.
Luis is also fearful of the costs of the E.R. visit as he has no insurance. Since he has a job, he says he wants to pay. “I clean office buildings in Belltown. And I pay taxes. I am not asking for something for nothing. And I’m going to buy one of those policies as soon as I have enough,” he tells the E.R. doctor.
The claim that Luis pays taxes is also likely spurious. If Luis is wholly legal, and has federal taxes withheld from his paycheck from a job as an office cleaner, it is highly likely that he will get all the money withheld from his checks sent right back to him at the end of the year because he does not meet the threshold for paying much in federal income tax. So, in truth, by getting back all his withholdings at the end of the tax year, he really does not “pay taxes.” The same is likely true for most of the withholding for his state taxes.
The episode degrades into more problematic behavior, though, as the immigrant’s daughter is diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and Luis’ application for assistance is turned down because he earns too much from his cleaning job.
After hearing how Luis now cannot pay for the serious, long-term treatment his little girl needs, Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) decides to commit insurance fraud and put her own daughter’s name on the admittance forms instead of the immigrant’s name.
In reality, if a doctor had done this, she would lose her license to practice medicine and could be prosecuted in a criminal case, and the hospital could even lose insurance reimbursements and various licenses for suborning the fraud.
Worse, the doctor could even have put the immigrant’s legal status in danger if the government were to learn that he was a party to insurance fraud. Criminal behavior is grounds for cancellation of a visa and deportation. So, Dr. Grey’s bleeding heart would have wrecked the lives of a long list of people in real life.
However, in the fantasy world of Grey’s Anatomy, Dr. Grey’s insurance fraud is all papered over, and a way is found to keep their girl in the hospital for a month until state insurance can kick in.
To push the liberal theme that the U.S. mistreats immigrants, the May 2 episode ignored much of the truth of how our immigration system works, and completely ignored the reality of the consequences of the lead character’s actions.
But the insurance fraud theme continued over the next two episodes, including the season finale, entitled “Jump into the Fog.”
In the following episode, “Drawn to the Blood,” the doctors were vexed by news of a meeting of hospital executives meeting about the likely insurance fraud case. The executives spent a part of the penultimate episode grilling surgical intern Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) over the incident sparked by Grey’s actions.
The episode ended with DeLuca claiming that he was the one who falsified the insurance paperwork by adding Grey’s name to the paper instead of the immigrant girl’s name. DeLuca aimed to take the fall for Grey.
By the season-ender, “Jump into the Fog,” DeLuca had been imprisoned pending a trial over the insurance fraud and Grey was finally owning up to her part in the insurance case. By the time the episode ended, Gray was fired, and sow were two other doctors, including Alexander Karev (Justin Chambers) and Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.).
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