Post author: Seth Farber
It has been a full week now since we drove through the maquiladora district in Reynosa, Mexico, where 75,000 factory workers earn roughly $1.50 per hour assembling a wide range of products, many of which are exported to the United States. One company operating in Reynosa is Fresenius Medical Care, a German manufacturer of dialysis machines.
Over the past two months, the New York Times has published a series of articles detailing the experiences of undocumented immigrants who had been receiving life-preserving dialysis treatment at Grady Memorial, a public hospital in Atlanta. Late last year, Grady closed its dialysis clinic and informed those of its patients without documents that it could pay either for them to relocate to their countries of origin (where few would have access to care) or for additional treatment at outside clinics, but for a period of only three months.
When we returned to San Antonio yesterday, I revisited those articles, curious to see if these dialysis machines that ill, impoverished workers may soon be denied access to are in fact the same ones manufactured in the Reynosa factory. To my chagrin, I found that Fresenius Medical Care is indeed at the heart of the Atlanta controversy. In fact, Fresenius operates the outside clinics that Grady Memorial Hospital’s undocumented patients now have temporary access to. The company is currently engaged in a court battle with the hospital over the length of their contract to provide care.
What an unsettling picture of a broken system.
Mexican workers are currently assembling dialysis machines at wages less than 20% of the U.S. minimum. Fresenius Medical Care, who reaps the benefit of this cheap labor, is also currently haggling in federal court over just how long it will be until a group of poor workers, many from Mexico, are denied access to the life-saving treatments those machines provide.
