2 ms·

Nope. EMTALA means hospitals have to evaluate, and if necessary, stabilize you, and that’s it. If you’ve got a growing cancer or some expensive chronic disease

Nope. EMTALA means hospitals have to evaluate, and if necessary, stabilize you, and that’s it. If you’ve got a growing cancer or some expensive chronic disease that’s causing serious problems, they’ll do what they can to stop those problems from killing you in any given visit, but they absolutely will not treat cancer with the intent of curing it or help you control a chronic disease knowing they’ll never recoup payment. They’ll give you a prescription for insulin but they’re certainly not going to fill it for you, no matter how big of an emergency it is or how much the hospital visit cost. Even then, they still bill you for all of the services they do render and medical bills still bankrupt people. Needing to make sure someone isn’t going to die in the next few hours is very different from taking the financial responsibility for treating a very expensive medical problem.

jliptzin 2y ago
This is not much different from how many insured people approach their healthcare. My friends who live paycheck to paycheck do not seek medical attention unless it is some extreme life or death situation. Even though they are insured, they are afraid of paying copays and deductibles of $100-$500 for routine visits. If their annual physical results in even just a $50 bill, they will not go. Only when they are in severe 10/10 pain will they start to think about seeing a doctor.
- chefandy 2y ago
  And at that level of expense, having no insurance, bad regular insurance, and catastrophic insurance is not much different. However, if you get into a car accident, have diabetes, eat a burger with E. coli oh157 which destroys your kidneys and you need dialysis to stay alive, get appendicitis, get HIV, get cancer, or possibly get exposed to rabies and need human rabies immune globulin, having no insurance is very very very very very different. If you have bad insurance you haven’t used that year, it will cost you $500 or whatever your deductible is. More than that with catastrophic insurance. When my wife and I were exposed to rabies during a fantastic stay at a super clean and well-run air bnb and needed the shots, the insurance company portion of our bill was $38,000.

jliptzin 2y ago

This is not much different from how many insured people approach their healthcare. My friends who live paycheck to paycheck do not seek medical attention unless it is some extreme life or death situation. Even though they are insured, they are afraid of paying copays and deductibles of $100-$500 for routine visits. If their annual physical results in even just a $50 bill, they will not go. Only when they are in severe 10/10 pain will they start to think about seeing a doctor.

chefandy 2y ago
And at that level of expense, having no insurance, bad regular insurance, and catastrophic insurance is not much different. However, if you get into a car accident, have diabetes, eat a burger with E. coli oh157 which destroys your kidneys and you need dialysis to stay alive, get appendicitis, get HIV, get cancer, or possibly get exposed to rabies and need human rabies immune globulin, having no insurance is very very very very very different. If you have bad insurance you haven’t used that year, it will cost you $500 or whatever your deductible is. More than that with catastrophic insurance. When my wife and I were exposed to rabies during a fantastic stay at a super clean and well-run air bnb and needed the shots, the insurance company portion of our bill was $38,000.