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EMTALA was passed under the Reagan administration. This forced hospitals to treat the uninsured, but it provided no funding to pay for those treatments. So the

EMTALA was passed under the Reagan administration. This forced hospitals to treat the uninsured, but it provided no funding to pay for those treatments. So the uninsured who don't pay are subsidized by high costs to the insured who do pay. In the 1970's, hospitals would just let the uninsured die in the parking lot / street. So that's the change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...

spaetzleesser 4y ago
"This forced hospitals to treat the uninsured, but it provided no funding to pay for those treatments. So the uninsured who don't pay are subsidized by high costs to the insured who do pay. " They are way overcompensating for this. I think it's just a BS excuse like pharmaceuticals having to be outrageously expensive in the US because other countries are negotiating better prices. I have read some studies where they concluded that the losses through uninsured people aren't really that high. They are only high on paper because they account for them with their chargemaster prices which are way higher than what they would get from insured people.