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Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Who pays when someone without insurance shows up in the ER?

If an uninsured patient shows up in the emergency room, who pays? The hospital? Taxpayers? The patient? Other patients?

The question is important as Republicans debate health care legislation that could result in more than 20 million fewer Americans having health insurance in ten years. If that happens, some people will go without care. Others will show up at hospitals, but won’t be able to pay their bills.

The year the Affordable Care Act passed, hospitals provided about $40 billion in "uncompensated care" — that is, care they were not paid for. That was nearly 6% of their total 2010 expenses.

A 1985 federal law requires emergency departments to stabilize and treat anyone entering their doors, regardless of their ability to pay.

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time to change that law allowing the hospital to take away assets of the loafers that use the ER for their cold medicine.

Anonymous said...

Obviously you didn't finish reading the article and formulated your response based on the headline. Perhaps you should try gathering all the relevant information before formulating a position. EMTALA requires emergent care is provided regardless of ability to pay. It dies not prevent efforts to collect payment.

Anonymous said...

7:33 PM - Most of them don't have primary physicians. I wonder how many excuses there are.

Anonymous said...

I've been saying this for years. And remember when Obama said his plan would reduce emergency room visits???
Another lie.
I'm glad he's out of our country kite surfing with billionaires.

Anonymous said...

My wife used to do ER registrations. Most of the people that call an ambulance to be transported to the ER are doing it for simple things like dialysis or a sore throat.
They don't have primary physicians because the primary got wise to their games.

Anonymous said...

7:35am Dialysis-----Simple????

Anonymous said...

With ObamaCare, the government (taxpayers) pay. Before Obamacare, people with insurance paid for the uninsured. Obamacare should have drastically reduced insurance costs, as the hospitals are now receiving government money for uninsured, in the form of Medicaid. But somehow, hospital and insurance companies managed to pocket all the savings, and actually increased bills for hospital care, and insurance premiums. Imagine that.

Anonymous said...

How many visits are associated with overdoses?

Anonymous said...

10:42
Dialysis= scheduled hence not an emergency