Posted on 08/22/2009 9:16:00 AM PDT by stan_sipple
The uninsured are frequently vilified as “free riders” who receive care but shift the cost onto others—when they are not being portrayed as victims who don’t get as much medical care as some think they should.
Thus they deserve punishment by higher taxes if they don’t accept their “individual responsibility” to buy costly insurance—or else public subsidies to buy “coverage” (instead of public payment for care actually received).
The problem is purportedly magnified by overuse of the more costly emergency room by uninsured patients who delayed care they should have gotten sooner from a lower-cost primary physician.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that “uncompensated care is less significant than many people assume.”
(Excerpt) Read more at aapsonline.org ...
I think the trick here is they aren’t counting those who receive public “insurance” such as medicare and medicaid. As husband to an ER nurse, I am constantly regaled with tales of those who are getting a free ride who will show up at the ER simply because they have nothing better to do. They also show up for the most minor of ailments, but the biggest reason is to try to get prescriptions for pain meds.
Interesting. Didn't think of that angle before.
No hable?
No count.
Medicare and Medicaid dont come close to paying the freight for all of these welfare leeches. Plus Ive heard small town radio programs when local callers complain about how welfare recipients’ constant need for ambulance service to the ER was bleeding them dry.
If you have a minor rear end auto collision or back strain at work, thats good for at least half a dozen scripts for oxy, baby (sarc)
Looking at the flip side of the argument, by excluding insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, some doctors are able to charge 50% less and yet make more money.
While this is done mostly by family care doctors, the “urgent care” businesses are also having considerable success in pulling non-emergent but still immediate treatment business from the emergency rooms, at much lower cost.
This is because urgent care can often offer faster service, which to many people is worth the cost, than waiting in an ER for hours. Even an illegal alien who has a child with an earache, is often willing to pay for faster treatment than wait for free treatment.
And such commercial enterprises *are* more interested in being paid, which is to the *advantage* of elderly and “less important” patients, who though they have money, are often put at the end of the line in ERs. Instead they get prompt care.
Though there are a multitude of reasons for doing so, some for profit hospitals are in essence “pre-registering” people in their community, trying to take care of the care and payment paperwork *before* they need hospital services, even ER care. Such hospitals will be able to exclude “walk ins”, unless someone else guarantees payment for them.
Yep. There is one doc there known in the community as "The Candy Man". He'd rather prescribe than argue with them. They even know what car he drives, so when his car is in the parking lot, the word gets out and the ER fills up.
I have been in an emergency room only once in my life, in 2004.
I was there 12 hours, waiting to be "treated", and watching an endless stream of "norwegians" and their kids get treated first.
I only had a suspected stroke.
My total treatment time, when it came, was 35 minutes.
Total bill for treatment?
$6200.
I got to pay for them too...
It’d be a lot cheaper to let people buy free market opiates.
These freeloaders will demand an ambulance ride because a taxi makes them pay ten bucks, but the ambulance will bill them. They're not paying anyway. They use the ambulance to bypass the waiting room, and require the hospitals to keep multiple extra beds in the ER.
Most of the paramedics I know that burn out do it because of the freeloaders, not because of the actual medical emergencies, which are maybe one out of six or seven runs. The rest are winos and people using the ER as a doctor's office.
“Community Outreach” types with worthless degrees making $300,000 a year in do nothing jobs at hospitals (Michelle Obama for example) also divert resources from caring for patients.
Shhhh dont say that too loud LOL
under obamacare that will be the tip of the iceberg, with all the lifestyle and behavioral modification bs, the government will be hiring armies of psychobabble specialists and social workers
the after hours walk-in clinics here wont take medicaid. Just last week a downtown health clinic closed because public reimbursements were too low.
Unless they were under a public charter, they should have gone fully private, where they could have charged lower fees. The trouble is that many of them are just medical people, not businessmen, and don’t really know of any system outside of government care, large HMO, or non-profit.
If they “had the building”, that is, either leased or owned, not had it assigned to them, their reorganization would be in an orderly process that is used by other physicians and dentists.
To start with, problems need to be triaged by an experienced nurse, who can tell who will *first* be dealing with someone: a PA, nurse, or a doctor. When the PA or nurse administer basic care, then at a given point, the doctor can walk in, ask a few questions, make sure there are no hidden problems, and leave for the next patient, for the PA or nurse to finish up.
If either the PA or nurse see or hear something unexpected, they get the doctor as well, because the situation may have changed with the new information.
One of the big problems that such clinics used to have was the high cost of pharmaceuticals. But Wal-Mart and others have slashed many of those prices.
The other problem is with blood, urine and feces testing, so it helps such a clinic if it partners to bring in once of the commercial testing sites for a region. I don’t know if any of them are going for purely private business yet, but this would also be a good opportunity for entrepreneurs in the future.
The only insurance that needs remain is catastrophic insurance, which is terribly hard to fund in any system. But that is way out of the league of community clinics in any event.
I’d like to see these stats broken down by state, then correlated with the illegal alien population.
When I lived in CA I spent four nights lying on the floor of the ER waiting room...after being SENT there by a regular doctor each time, I waited on average about 6 hours. This after the doc said he’d call so that they’d see me right away because he thought I had a real surgical emergency. After waiting each time I was then quickly told that I had cramps, minor issues, etc., and sent home, until the last time when they finally discovered by abscessed appendix and took it at at 4 AM. There were a lot of “Norwegians” in the waiting room.
There were also a lot of idiots. One woman had her three year old there because she was so worried about her being sick. The child was jumping around and eating McNuggets. Didn’t look sick to me.
Three weeks after my experience, my dad was sent to a different CA ER by his regular doctor, with the words that the doc would call ahead because my dad had a surgical emergency. My dad waited 6 hours and almost had to have his leg amputated because of the wait. He made a shocking, miraculous recovery. No thanks to a lot of “Norwegians.”
Funny, though, we haven’t had this problem in Indiana.
I choose to go w/o health insurance for now.
IMHO the problems are twofold:
1.) Greed and
2.) Minimal preventive care.
Re: Item 1 - virtually every health insurance policy I ever held, failed to live up to it’s policy manual. The only exception was Maxicare which never worried about costs b/c it was gov’t funded! The greed to increase payments and minimize actual services provided has led to a virtual catch-22. As the corruption continues costs will continue to soar.
Re: Item 2 - the best help I’ve received regarding my health came from chiropractic care to minimize most of the problems of aging. Chiropractors are one of the few health care professionals to subscribe nearly 100% to the oath of “first do no harm!” Also most folks appear to be ‘allergic’ to regular exercise and eating healthy.
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