Okay wait a minute.
The chest beating about free markets and keep the gov’t out of it stuff ignores a fact.
If an uninsured person shows up at an emergency room, the docs are required by law to treat that person. American or illegal, that’s the law. Treat to stabilize and then send them away. American or LEGAL . . . a tourist who has no insurance . . . treat and send them on their way (back home where you can’t collect).
The hospital eats that cost and can’t possibly stay in business.
So if you’re going to chest beat and embrace the NO GOV’T INVOLVEMENT chant, you also better have all those red state laws changed requiring some morality from ER doctors.
The hospital doesn’t eat that cost. That illegals care is built in to the bill of everyone that walks in behind him.
True.
The hospital eats that cost and can’t possibly stay in business.
Whoa whoa whoa.....not exactly, if only that were true.
They need to be compensated for this "free" healthcare, but not in the way it's being done. Irresponsible people are gaming the system and the government and hospitals are letting them.
Why do you think provider healthcare costs are going so high and spiraling upward? As grandpa said....nothing is free.
And as PJ O'Rourke said: "If you think healthcare is expensive now....just wait till it's free."
Most "bad debt" and "charity care" costs are passed on to the cash-paying and insured patients by padding their bill. The same is true for underpayment by Medicaid (medical welfare).
The practice known as "cost shifting" needs to be banned, and "free care" more appropriately given instead of always using the ER (in-house clinic) Alternate funding mechanisms need to be created.
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So if you’re going to chest beat and embrace the NO GOV’T INVOLVEMENT chant, you also better have all those red state laws changed requiring some morality from ER doctors.
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Oh, I’m right there w/ you, FRiend. Somehow, people think h’care, even “E.R.” care is a ‘right’; instead of takings\involuntary servitude.
Free Market means exactly as you state: govt OUT, period. Can’t pay? Make arrangements, file 11/13, talk to family\friends\church....but its a service like any other, paid by the user thereof.