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That was an interesting read, thanks for sharing. My own understanding, from personal experience working in an ER, was that they charge more there to offset the
by zeroego 8y ago
That was an interesting read, thanks for sharing. My own understanding, from personal experience working in an ER, was that they charge more there to offset the cost of the (often impoverished) people who use it for everything from the sniffles to gun shot wounds. These people, who don't have health insurance, typically don't pay their bills. Also, I saw many homeless people come in simply for a bed to sleep in and a hot meal. They take up a bed and nurses/doctor's time. ER's aren't mean't to be non-emergent PCP's or soup kitchens, yet they often end up serving that purpose. The end result as I see it is a bunch of expensive and poorly delegated resources.
- lighthazard 8y agoAny statistics on patient usage, non-payment, and free clinics?
- zeroego 8y agoUnfortunately I do not have any. This was just my experience/what I was told working in a busy ER in a major metro area.
- village-idiot 8y agoIt’s estimated that keeping a homeless person on the streets can cost the local government up to $1m/year in terms of police, jail, and hospital resource usages.
- Judgmentality 8y agoI'd love to read more about that. Do you have a source?
- village-idiot 8y agoCan’t find my old source, and it looks like $1m is pretty off the mark. It looks like this number is wildly variable. Places like Texas spend a low of $9-40k to jail and treat homelessness in ERs. Places like the Puget Sound spend about $1 billion[0] a year to deal with their ~5,500 homeless people. While that’s far from $1m, it is pretty high at $181,000 a person year. 0. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of-homelessness-seattle-king-county-costs.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of...
- Johnny555 8y agoI'd like to see a reference for that number, $1M sounds awfully high.
- village-idiot 8y agoI can’t find my old sources, and t seems like $1m is indeed quite off the mark. It looks like this number is wildly variable. Places like Texas spend a low of $9-40k to jail and treat homelessness in ERs. Places like the Puget Sound spend about $1 billion[0] a year to deal with their ~5,500 homeless people. While that’s far from $1m, it is pretty high at $181,000 a person year. 0. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of-homelessness-seattle-king-county-costs.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of...
- ardy42 8y ago> I can’t find my old sources, and t seems like $1m is indeed quite off the mark. I remember a source for that. From what I recall, it wasn't that every homeless person cost the local government $1m a year, but that a particular homeless person cost that much (due to his ER usage, police involvement, etc). The article was about how it's actually cheaper for the government to just to give a certain subset of homeless people no-strings-attached free apartments than to let them continue to live on the streets.