Dr. Discovers Illegal Spending-Then Gets Fired

http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=35781

Dr. Gene Rogers said he never wanted to be a political man.For the last 40 years, Rogers has been a man of medicine.  One of his first assignments was caring for soldiers during the Vietnam War.  His last assignment was for the County of Sacramento in the Indigent Care Program.  It is a job Rogers says he lost because of his attention on the county's spending for illegal immigrants. The program Rogers administered was for non-emergency specialist care for indigent citizens.  When county budget cuts threatened to cut his staff, Rogers ordered a tip to bottom review of patient  files to make sure everyone getting care was eligible. "I had asked one of the IT guys to run a program to see how much we were spending on undocumented aliens," Rogers said.  What he found was $2.1 million county taxpayer dollars being spent on non-emergency care for non-citizens.  Rogers said he routinely saw requests from illegal immigrants for such services as fertility testing or reimbursements for cab rides to the doctor.  He also said he felt the county's program was becoming a draw for illegal immigrants who came for services, but listed their home address in another country. 

"I started asking questions of different people," said Rogers.  "They would say, this is a political issue, don't go there, we don't need to be bringing that up...I said, mandate from the board of supervisors that we do this?  At the time, there was no mandate."

The Federal Welfare Reform act of 1996 prohibited such spending unless states passed bills allowing counties and hospital districts to "opt in."

Rogers filed suit against the county and says the county took action."They approached the legislature realizing that there was a sub-section in the law violated that allowed them to provide services to the undocumented if the state legislature passed a bill," Rogers said.

The bill was SB 1534 carried by State Senator Deborah Ortiz.  The bill passed the legislature in 2006 and was enacted January 1, 2007.  Shortly after the law was enacted, Rogers said his employer started building a paper trail against him.  Rogers said he was fired in August after months of retaliation for the lawsuit.

News10 contacted the county to ask about Roger's termination and was told this was a "personnel matter" and no comment would be made.

One of the County Supervisors who heard of the matter did her own investigation.  Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan said the board took up the question of non-emergency care for illegal immigrants in 1997 on the advice of staff who had read the Federal Welfare Reform Act of 1996.

At that time, the county was spending $200,000 a year...

There's lots more but the library is closing and I can't be on the computer much longer.  I  saw this on TV  (there's a video of it on the website somewhere).  I was very proud to see a mainstream media news story that was actually brave enough to tell people the truth.  You don't know you are in the dark till the light comes on!