The myth of emergency room health care
Jennifer Granholm keeps saying that uninsured people get free medical treatment in emergency rooms for which insured people (and the taxpayers) end up paying. It's only partially true.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) simply requires hospitals to determine if an emergency exists and, if so, simply to stabilize the patient, without requiring actual treatment of the underlying condition.
The point is that uninsured people do get effectively turned away from emergency rooms, through a variety of ways. It’s not always simply a direct “we won’t see you because you don’t have insurance.” It can be a brief triage, judging that the patient is “stable” and can just go find actual treatment somewhere else.
No, this doesn’t (usually) happen when someone is in the process of bleeding to death, but in a great many other situations, it’s easy enough to state that the patient is not in imminent danger and simply to evaluate the patient briefly, note “stable” condition, and discharge — with butt covering proviso that the patient is to seek additional medical attention in the event that the situation happens to worsen — what’s the old conservative saw about “treatment delayed is treatment denied?” That’s why uninsured children who are taken to emergency rooms have twice the fatality rate of insured children.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) simply requires hospitals to determine if an emergency exists and, if so, simply to stabilize the patient, without requiring actual treatment of the underlying condition.
The point is that uninsured people do get effectively turned away from emergency rooms, through a variety of ways. It’s not always simply a direct “we won’t see you because you don’t have insurance.” It can be a brief triage, judging that the patient is “stable” and can just go find actual treatment somewhere else.
No, this doesn’t (usually) happen when someone is in the process of bleeding to death, but in a great many other situations, it’s easy enough to state that the patient is not in imminent danger and simply to evaluate the patient briefly, note “stable” condition, and discharge — with butt covering proviso that the patient is to seek additional medical attention in the event that the situation happens to worsen — what’s the old conservative saw about “treatment delayed is treatment denied?” That’s why uninsured children who are taken to emergency rooms have twice the fatality rate of insured children.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
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