Uninsured ER patients twice as likely to die

[Chris]

I experienced some of this for profit healthcare bullshit when my mother had a stroke.

She had Medicare plus supplemental insurance.

After she had been in the for-profit hospital for 2 weeks, she had burned through all her coverage, so they dumped her comatose self on a public hospital an hour and a half away. My 80 year old father then had to drive an hour and a half each way every day to visit her. The hospital administrator made up some bullshit excuse and lied to my face about it.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

I experienced some of this for profit healthcare bullshit when my mother had a stroke.

She had Medicare plus supplemental insurance.

After she had been in the for-profit hospital for 2 weeks, she had burned through all her coverage, so they dumped her comatose self on a public hospital an hour and a half away. My 80 year old father then had to drive an hour and a half each way every day to visit her. The hospital administrator made up some bullshit excuse and lied to my face about it.

You're a liar. You cannot "burn through" Medicare coverage.

 

[Chris]

I experienced some of this for profit healthcare bullshit when my mother had a stroke.

She had Medicare plus supplemental insurance.

After she had been in the for-profit hospital for 2 weeks, she had burned through all her coverage, so they dumped her comatose self on a public hospital an hour and a half away. My 80 year old father then had to drive an hour and a half each way every day to visit her. The hospital administrator made up some bullshit excuse and lied to my face about it.

You're a liar. You cannot "burn through" Medicare coverage.

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Chris]

Federal health regulators allege Mercy Medical Center violated federal anti-patient dumping laws, and the Redding hospital now has 10 days to fix its emergency room problems or else Medicare payments will be suspended, a move that could potentially force the hospital out of business.

In two letters filed with reports delivered to the hospital today, officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) allege that during two inspections at the hospital last month, inspectors found examples of patients who were not given proper medical screening exams or were inappropriately transferred to other health care centers.

Federal regulators say Mercy violated patient-dumping laws » Redding Record Searchlight

 

[Ame®icano]

I experienced some of this for profit healthcare bullshit when my mother had a stroke.

She had Medicare plus supplemental insurance.

After she had been in the for-profit hospital for 2 weeks, she had burned through all her coverage, so they dumped her comatose self on a public hospital an hour and a half away. My 80 year old father then had to drive an hour and a half each way every day to visit her. The hospital administrator made up some bullshit excuse and lied to my face about it.

You're a liar. You cannot "burn through" Medicare coverage.

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

What makes you think that ObamaCare would be any different?

 

[Chris]

You're a liar. You cannot "burn through" Medicare coverage.

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

What makes you think that ObamaCare would be any different?

The fact that every other industrialized country in the world has national health insurance, and it works well in most cases.

And it is only people like you that are standing in the way of a better America.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

I experienced some of this for profit healthcare bullshit when my mother had a stroke.

She had Medicare plus supplemental insurance.

After she had been in the for-profit hospital for 2 weeks, she had burned through all her coverage, so they dumped her comatose self on a public hospital an hour and a half away. My 80 year old father then had to drive an hour and a half each way every day to visit her. The hospital administrator made up some bullshit excuse and lied to my face about it.

You're a liar. You cannot "burn through" Medicare coverage.

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

Wrong answer dumb ass....I have experienced it when my father went through his cancer treatments.....Medicare paid for it all.

 

[KittenKoder]

They should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps gotten a good education and gotten a good job with insurance benefits.

Everyone knows all it takes is an education to get a good job with benefits.

Or ... *gasp* Medicare and Medicaid ... those damned politicians for not already having something like Medicare in place.

 

[Chris]

You're a liar. You cannot "burn through" Medicare coverage.

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

Wrong answer dumb ass....I have experienced it when my father went through his cancer treatments.....Medicare paid for it all.

Fuck you, bitch.

I was there. You weren't.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

What makes you think that ObamaCare would be any different?

The fact that every other industrialized country in the world has national health insurance, and it works well in most cases.

And it is only people like you that are standing in the way of a better America.

We're not socialist here...if you don't like it and want the government to take care of you from cradle to grave because you're too fucking lazy to get a job my suggestion to you is move to Canada and become a tax payer burden up there.

 

[KittenKoder]

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

Wrong answer dumb ass....I have experienced it when my father went through his cancer treatments.....Medicare paid for it all.

Fuck you, bitch.

I was there. You weren't.

Um ... Patek was there, notice his real life story (something you should start living) ... and I know for a fact that Medicare and Medicaid are there, available to all who can't afford health insurance ... try again.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

Wrong answer dumb ass....I have experienced it when my father went through his cancer treatments.....Medicare paid for it all.

Fuck you, bitch.

I was there. You weren't.

Ya....OK.

 

[Ame®icano]

Sorry, buckaroo.

Until you have experienced it, you don't know what you are talking about.

What makes you think that ObamaCare would be any different?

The fact that every other industrialized country in the world has national health insurance, and it works well in most cases.

And it is only people like you that are standing in the way of a better America.

Name one.

Better for whom?

 

[Chris]

Wrong answer dumb ass....I have experienced it when my father went through his cancer treatments.....Medicare paid for it all.

Fuck you, bitch.

I was there. You weren't.

Um ... Patek was there, notice his real life story (something you should start living) ... and I know for a fact that Medicare and Medicaid are there, available to all who can't afford health insurance ... try again.

You don't know shit.

You weren't there. There was much discussion in our family because her supplemental insurance was running out, and the for profit hospital just found an excuse to dump her because they couldn't make as much money off her once her insurance ran out. Then I went to see the hospital administrator who lied to my face about the reason for the dumping.

 

[Chris]

Rumors had been circulating for years about a practice called "patient dumping," whereby hapless patients—largely homeless individuals—are dropped off in Skid Row, upon discharge. The theory is that this part of town would have an abundance of services for these unfortunates, and the hot potato could simply be passed along.

The health care industry tried to relegate these rumors to the status of alien abduction tales, until one of these incidents was caught on tape in March, 2006.

Carol Ann Reyes, a 63-year-old homeless woman, was found wandering in the street near Los Angeles' Skid Row. Reyes had just been discharged from Kaiser Permanente Bellflower hospital where, after taking a fall, she had been treated for three days. Wearing little more than a hospital gown and a diaper—the hospital lost her clothes and even left her without pants or shoes—Reyes was put in a taxi and dumped on Skid Row, a 50 square-block area that is the last stop for approximately 11,000 people.

According to Rev. Andy Bales, who runs Union Rescue Mission, the biggest shelter in Skid Row:

"The cab came this way. He did a u-turn, pulled around, and stopped. The driver didn't even get out of the car. The back door opened and this little lady got out in her hospital gown."

Patient Dumping:  Another Dark Side of Health Care

 

[Chris]

Since 1991, Public Citizen's Health Research Group has tracked the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) record in enforcing the federal "patient dumping" law. In a report released in December 1997, we named 256 hospitals reported to HHS between April 1, 1995 and September 30, 1996 for violating the law (and later confirmed by HHS as having done so), and 26 hospitals and eight physicians who paid fines in 1995 and 1996 to settle alleged patient dumping violations. The report updates four earlier reports on this topic published in 1991, 1993, 1994, and 1996. The addition of these hospitals brings the total number that have violated the patient dumping law during its first ten years (Sept. 86 to Sept. 96) to almost 700 hospitals, or more than one in ten acute-care hospitals in the United States. The actual number of violations is much higher, since many cases are not reported to the government.

In addition to naming 256 hospitals found to have violated the law, the report includes for the first time patient-specific clinical information from the reports of government inspectors who investigated dumping complaints. Examples of violations from 31 of these government inspection reports include:

A 2-year-old child with a fever and history of vomiting and diarrhea earlier that day was brought to the hospital's emergency room by her mother, but instead of being medically screened, was referred to a physician's private practice. Seven hours later, the child was taken to the emergency department by ambulance, but was unresponsive, and died that evening.

A 16-year-old patient with history of fetal alcohol syndrome and suicide attempts, was brought to the emergency room by his father who stated that the patient had threatened to kill him. The patient was allowed to be transferred by car with his father to a facility with an adolescent psychiatric unit despite the risk of the patient becoming violent and harming others.

A 28-year-old woman went to the emergency department with severe abdominal pain. Although the medical screening exam included a positive pregnancy test, she was discharged without her severe abdominal pain being adequately investigated. Three days later, she was admitted to the hospital in shock with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

In 1986, Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which forbids the practice known as patient dumping--denial of treatment to emergency patients or women in labor, or transferring them to another hospital in an unstable condition. Patients are usually "dumped" because they are poor or uninsured, but in recent years, there have been reports of patients with health insurance through health maintenance organizations (HMOs), or other forms of managed care, finding themselves the victims of patient dumping as well.

Patients in managed care may find themselves having their treatment delayed while the hospital seeks authorization for payment, having treatment denied if the authorization is refused, or being shuffled from one hospital to another in a dangerously unstable condition because their HMO has a contract with the second hospital.

Public Citizen | Publications - Hospital Emergency Rooms and Patient Dumping

 

[Chris]

From the same article...

However, government vigilance alone will not end "patient dumping" as long as more than 40 million people remain uninsured and clinical decisions are driven by concerns about who pays the bills. The recent problems that patients insured through managed care organizations have had in emergency rooms have emphasized how economic, rather than medical, considerations are still playing a major role in many emergency room decisions. Patients in life-threatening condition will continue to be denied care until access to health care is recognized and provided as a basic right. Patient dumping from American hospital emergency rooms is a dangerous, disgraceful but predictable accompaniment to the market-driven health care system in the richest nation in the world. True health care reform -- including universal coverage -- is needed to put a stop to this unconscionable and deadly practice.

http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=4891

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Funny how every time you come up with some anti private healthcare Op-Ed piece you miraculously have personally experienced it in an effort to bolster the articles premise...which is....

to let lazy ass leaches, such as yourself, become so dependent on the government that you can just sit home and watch "The View" and "Oprah" all fricken day and wait for your free food to be delivered by the government cheese truck, then bitch about how tough you got it.

You and those like you that advocate socialism are entitled to your views and can express them but don't expect everyone to fall lock step in with your fucked up view of life and how YOU think government should be.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Fuck you, bitch.

I was there. You weren't.

Um ... Patek was there, notice his real life story (something you should start living) ... and I know for a fact that Medicare and Medicaid are there, available to all who can't afford health insurance ... try again.

You don't know shit.

You weren't there. There was much discussion in our family because her supplemental insurance was running out, and the for profit hospital just found an excuse to dump her because they couldn't make as much money off her once her insurance ran out. Then I went to see the hospital administrator who lied to my face about the reason for the dumping.

Oh....first it was Medicare ran out...now it's supplemental insurance....hmmmmm...you need to get your lies straightened out before posting them on line.

 

[editec]

what a bunch of garbage, doctors and nurses in an ER don't stop to check who's paying and who isn't when they treat trauma,, they just treat the damn trauma and let the hospital worry about collections.. don't you liberals ever get tired of the manure you spread? ever?

Yeah, that was my first thought on the subject, too.

Sounds like complete BS to me.

Unless there's some explanation that involves long run post emergency care that they're not telling us about, I suspect this is nonsense.