[PA Engineer]

7) Those who show up at an Emergency Room without health insurance would be treated, but then sanctioned criminally. Probably pay a fine or do community service. Multiple offenders risk jail time (like deadbeat dads). That takes care of the Emergency Room problem. It’s a requirement that everyone have some kind of health insurance done the right way.

Unnecessary. Hospitals are opening Urgent Care Centers adjacent to the Emergency Departments. Expand programs to reimburse the UC Centers.

[xzins]

It is true that some people don’t have the money to pay for any kind of health insurance. Especially if there are dependents involved, that’s an important issue. Some people — many irresponsible — will never get there.

The Good Samaritan type coverage in emergency rooms for that kind of thing was not necessary, but I understood it, and in the context of a Good Samaritan, I was willing to go along with it.

It got abused and got crazy.

At least they should have been tracking individual abusers by SSN, so they could modify to deny emergency room care.

[ArmstedFragg]

Unfortunately, the potential liability for mistakenly triaging an ER patient to an urgent care center when it turns out that minor symptom patient is the one in 10 thousand who actually had a serious underlying problem makes that solution problematic. Either Federal and state liability laws need to be changed, or the Texas non-hospital ER program expanded.