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The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires any hospital that participates in Medicare and provides emergency services to provide (1) an appropriate medical screening examination to anyone who comes to its emergency department asking for treatment and (2) necessary stabilizing treatment or transfer to another medical facility if the examination reveals an emergency medical condition.Not correct. Hospitals are required to provide emergency medical service to a point where the patient is stabilized and can be safely transferred. Hospitals are not required to provide critical care at no cost. They only have to provide emergency services. So if your doctor says you need bypass surgery, don't think your're going to walk into an emergency and get it unless it is needed to stabilize your condition.
Uh...wrong. A hospital MAY after stabilizing your condition, refuse to do a bypass if it is deemed necessary, but if they do diagnose it and refuse to do it, they must then transport you to a facility that WILL do the surgery...such as a county hospital who will work out how it's to be paid for later.
And just for the record, Medicaid is a state program with different qualifiers for different states. The primary one being a household income threshold that is loosely based on the poverty level in each state. If you are above that threshold and don't have insurance...you can just make the payments to the hospital that you SHOULD have been making for insurance in the first place instead of the payments on that F-250 pickup. ;~)
People have been setting up payment programs with doctors and hospitals for everything from toothaches to appendectomies for as long as they have been around. TRUST me...been there done that. Got the scares to prove it. And docs didn't have to have some government mandate to get um to do it.
THAT only became necessary when lawyers started running rough shod over the system and the government decided to start setting the prices doctors could charge for their service instead of protecting them from the predators and letting the free market work!
As Thomas Jefferson said, "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
What we have allowed an out of control government to put in place as health care over the last 60 years in this country is an ERROR!
The key phrase is emergency medical condition. Having a heart condition or cancer that without treatment will kill you within a year is not considered an emergency. Hospitals are only required to stabilize your condition.
Even if a hospital is willing to admit you and offer a long term payment contract, you're going have to find a surgeon that will take your case without much hope of being paid as well as followup care such as office visits, tests, medications and rehab. The chance of a successful outcome for a person with a serious medical condition, no government assistance, insurance, or financial resources is pretty slim.