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>>Actually, it does refuse to treat people quite regularly. Aside from emergency department, health care providers are generally free to refuse care for patient

>>Actually, it does refuse to treat people quite regularly. Aside from emergency department, health care providers are generally free to refuse care for patients they believe cannot pay except in the case of a life-threatening emergency. This isn't actually accurate at all. Hospitals with emergency departments must stabilize patients in an emergency. Thats it. The emergency room has no responsibility to treat the underlying cause. It isn't a loophole that people take advantage of because you still don't get treatment. I suppose you could show up to multiple emergency rooms and hope one treats you but that isn't something you do if you are chronically hurt. People who can't afford to get treatment or aren't on medicaid or charity care don't get treated period. You can test this by just comparing the emergency room rates in Massachusetts before and after coverage expansion. More people went to the emergency room once they had coverage than previously.

bunderbunder 14y ago
You're right, that's exactly the case. Sorry if I explained it poorly. The spot where this gets really fantastically expensive is when you get to the "wash, rinse, repeat" part of the situation. After all, someone who is just being stabilized and discharged without significant treatment of the underlying cause is much more likely to just get sick again. There's a hospital in the town where I grew up which managed to shave millions off of the cost of operating their emergency department in a rather instructive way: They identified their most expensive repeat patients, and started just paying to send them in for regular medical care for whatever health problems it was they had. Yeah it meant that they were giving out free health care to these folks, but that turned out to be nothing compared to the cost of having them show up in an ambulance every other week.

bunderbunder 14y ago

You're right, that's exactly the case. Sorry if I explained it poorly. The spot where this gets really fantastically expensive is when you get to the "wash, rinse, repeat" part of the situation. After all, someone who is just being stabilized and discharged without significant treatment of the underlying cause is much more likely to just get sick again. There's a hospital in the town where I grew up which managed to shave millions off of the cost of operating their emergency department in a rather instructive way: They identified their most expensive repeat patients, and started just paying to send them in for regular medical care for whatever health problems it was they had. Yeah it meant that they were giving out free health care to these folks, but that turned out to be nothing compared to the cost of having them show up in an ambulance every other week.