"Attempted" Copyright Infringement may be illegal soon.

[Leo Mauler]

--- Nathan Cerny <ncerny at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/6/07, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> >
> > Please explain how the E.R. care costs the
> > hospital anything.  Just because they bill 
> > a large amount doesn't mean it's justified.

> > And where is this? Last I checked, it was 
> > illegal for hospitals in the US to deny you 
> > care because you couldn't pay.
> 
> I think you answered your own question there.  
> ER is the single most expensive department in 
> a hospital because they have to give care, and 
> they admit people who are uninsured.  They 
> also run the longest hours, have one of the 
> highest risks, and are generally very expensive 
> to operate.  Most hospitals make up for this 
> loss by inflating other prices (thus the 
> previous comment about a surgery being less 
> expensive in other countries...).
> 
> And about the part where it's illegal to deny
> care...he was referring to a specialist.  ER 
> care is open to anyone regardless of insurance 
> or payment.

The 1986 E.R. law stipulates that emergency rooms
cannot turn anyone (who presents with an injury or
illness) away for inability to pay.  However, all they
are required to do by law is stabilize your condition.
 Any care over and above stabilizing your condition is
not required, and cash-strapped hospitals frequently
send the newly-stabilized patient out the door with a
referral everyone knows the patient will never be able
to afford.

Example: you have no insurance and specifically no
dental coverage.  A tooth in your mouth becomes
decayed and then infected.  You go to the E.R. for
care.  All they are required to do by that 1986 law is
bring down the inflammation and cure the infection. 
The appropriate minimum non-emergency care would be to
take dental X-rays and extract the tooth, but that is
not required to stabilize the patient (and is
expensive to boot), so the hospital does not perform
this additional expensive service.  This results in
the same patient bouncing in and out of hospital E.R.s
with the same re-infected tooth.  I think I'm more or
less quoting something which happened in Missouri in
the past few years, but I might be mistaken.

Contrast this with Canada: you wouldn't have the
infected tooth to begin with because it would have
been treated back when it was a cavity.  The Canadian
system allows people to get their teeth taken care of
by a dentist long before the patient (in the U.S.)
would become a chronic drain on local E.R.s.  

Canadian doctors are going back to this system
precisely because they can know that they can make a
specialist referral and that the patient will see this
specialist as soon as possible.  Here in the U.S. the
patient will put off the specialist until s/he can
afford the specialist, which could result in the
patient never seeing the specialist.  Six months in
Canada is a lot shorter wait than eternity in the U.S.

> I do not believe this applies to other departments
> of privately funded hospitals, or to specialists.

That is correct.  When you go to see a specialist, you
may have a terminal illness but it is not going to
cause your immediate death during the specialist
visit, so he is not required to see you without
arranging payment in advance.


       
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