Discuss 'Study: Uninsured....'

This study surprises me, too. I'm inclined to believe that these results largely reflect inner-city medical center concerns with their disproportionately high indigent population. If a greater number of hospitals nationwide reported data on how their uninsured were cared for, I'm confident things would appear not completely well, but maybe a little better. I've worked in both not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals up and down the east coast and in some pretty large urban areas but never saw a difference in care provided to uninsured patients. The public as well as many altruistic healthcare providers like to bash for-profit institutions but they are required to provide a certain amount of free care, period. While they may attempt to transfer stabilized, uninsured patients out to other institutions, the EMTALA law strictly prohibits "dumping."


The complaints are getting meaner and louder. We've all heard them and honestly, maybe even said some things about the "users and abusers" who are in the poorest health and who contribute to the rising cost of healthcare that they receive and don't pay for. Beginning over thirty years ago when I was an EMT through to present time, it's been my personal experience that for moral and ethical reasons, uninsured people get what the paying population gets and since they're in the hospital all the time, they really get more of it.

Okay, I'm done now.

R