And so it begins.
too many use the emergency room for the doctor’s office
Waste of money to pay postage to mail a bill. They aren’t going to pay anyway. This is just going to hasten the bankrupcy of more hospitals.
And why should ANY non-emergency visits be covered?
Bill all you want, they won’t pay it. If they are illegal, or on welfare, or unemployed, there’s not much that can be done.
Isn’t it interesting that a northern, liberal, supposedly more “enlightened” state would attempt this!?
Many Medicaid recipients use the ER for their family doctor because Medicaid pays for the ER but not office visits. Down in my part of Texas, one hospital put up a sign: “If your illness is not deemed an Emergency, you must pay a $50 charge before being seen by a physician.” That cleaned out the Emergency Room.
A couple years ago there was a story around here about people that were on medicaid using the emergency room hundreds of times.
For stuff like a stubbed toe.
None of these people paid anything for their visit.
I don’t object to this, this is medicaid. Some have no choice but there are plenty of others on medicaid that have gamed the system and shouldn’t be on it anyway.
Took my mother in law to a hospital emergency room in Allentown,Pa. last Feb. I sat there from 5:00 PM til midnight & saw a constant parade of whole families that did not speak english go in for treatment of colds.(alleged colds) You hear about this stuff but it is a shock when you see it. There were no questions asked they just let them in. We pay for this crap. It needs to be changed as we all know.
Liberals will shelve this by asserting discrimination against ILLEGALS.
“”State officials have notified clients that they will get coverage for only three of those visits each year starting Saturday. Additional visits will not be covered, and patients may be billed for that care.””
The only reasons I can imagine a person would need to visit the emergency room more than three times per year is:
1. Overdosing on illegal drugs.
2. Bullet or knife wounds from illegal actions.
It seems Washington needs to toss some Medicaid patients into the slammer.
Why even three a year?
bump
This is better but not great. What needs to be done is cash up front for non=emergency visits. You will collect little by billing. In the State I live in you can not bill. You just do not get paid period. One step forward but not by much. I would estimate 80% at least of ER visits are not appropriate. When a patient shows up in the ER and sees a physician who knows nothing about them alot of tests are run just to keep the lawyers at arms length. I saw a patient of mine who had about 4,000 of testing done for abdominal pain that ended up being constipation. I can guarantee you if they had been seen by me in the office the bill would have been less than 100.00.
but illegals without even MediCaid will still get free ER care, right?
I havr no problem with cutting Welfare Medicaid coverage.
The problem is that it is a federal crime and malpractice liability to refuse these parasites.