If you ran a hospital, what policy would you set for dealing with emergency patients who arrive without health insurance?
*Note: This is one of the posts I will be making entitled "Life Questions". Generally, these posts will be shorter than my regular posts. These questions come from a book I have entitled The Book of Questions. See it here. The sole purpose of this book and my blog is to stimulate conversation. Please feel free to write your comments in the section below, however short or long you'd like!
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I would treat the patients because it is both my ethical and legal duty to do so. A federal law passed in 1986 to prohibit a practice commonly known as "patient dumping" gives you the right to emergency care regardless of your ability to pay. The federal law applies to hospitals that participate in Medicare -- and that includes most hospitals in the United States. The federal patient-dumping law entitles you to do three things: screening, emergency care and appropriate transfers. A hospital must provide "stabilizing care" for a patient with an emergency medical condition.
Although they dropped the idea of a single-payer system, the Obama Administration’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act goes far in helping those who are uninsured. Now, the real issue with our health care system is its unbelievable cost. Hopefully, future legislation can help to incentivize healthy life styles (the First Lady has tried to help move this along) and reduce health care costs.
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