4 ms·
Yes, since ADA mandates that accommodations must be provided at no cost to the patient (an unfunded mandate). Here is a tidbit from the article: Participants d
by chromatin 4y ago
Yes, since ADA mandates that accommodations must be provided at no cost to the patient (an unfunded mandate). Here is a tidbit from the article:
Participants described both financial and time-related challenges of accommodating communication needs. One non-rural-practicing primary care physician stated: “I took it upon myself to actually hire an outside service to do [sign language interpretation]. They billed the office. …Their bill was higher than what we were making, so it was a losing venture. …It cost me $30 per visit for that patient, out of pocket.”
- bombcar 4y agoThis is the problem - people reduce "ADA mandates" to "lol you had to install a ramp or elevator" but it's much more than that. As a society we need to provide for those who are disabled, but we need more than just "lol pay for it" as a method. From one point of view a sign-language interpreter for someone who is deaf and cannot read is entirely a "reasonable accommodation" and from another (losing money on the transaction) it is not. While there's no guarantee that every customer is "profitable" we should work to make sure that the "disabled" aren't always in that group. For example, the ramp is a one time cost and amortized over all customers forever, and so it's not noticed much. But the interpreter was - because there is nothing that disconnects the cost from the service. If instead there was a city-wide pool of translators and interpreters that can be summoned/scheduled, and the pool was paid for by a tax/fee across all interactions, then it would barely be noticed, and those who have to use it wouldn't feel like they got cheated.
- chromatin 4y agoDownvoted for directly answering the parent post's question and supplying a supporting reference to the posted article. Nice.