Re: question about emergency room visits

Hi Trapper :),

Here are some of my thoughts on it:

Most folks can't afford health insurance these days.
There are some hospitals who are county-run and who guarantee treatment, even if the patient can't afford it, usually as long as the patient comes in through the ER. However, what they are guaranteeing is *treatment*. They don't guarantee not to *bill* you.

Many people are (wisely) afraid of unconscionably high unpaid medical bills, which will certainly ruin their credit. Half of all bankruptcies in the USA today are due to exorbitantly high unpaid medical bills. Please do not think medical bills won't cause this (Which is what I was told), because they certainly will. That debt gets sold to the same collection agencies as the mortgages which are in default all across the country, and the collectors are just as nasty.

These days it is often a long wait to get an appointment with an MD, sometimes as long as a couple of months. Sometimes the only quick way to be seen by an MD is the ER.

Most insurances cover ER treatment, so if someone is stuck in an HMO and doesn't have time to deal with the HMO bureaucracy in a medical situation, or does not trust their Primary Care Dr (it happens), they go to the ER.

In addition, insurance companies are looking for ways to load insured people with pre-existing conditions, so that they can exclude the insured from collecting benefits for whatever the health challenge is.

Primary Care Physicians and specialists seem to be (Probably innocently) helping this pre-existing insurance thing happen by documenting every sneeze and eyelash, taking invasively intensive personal histories which often IMO are none of their business, whipping diagnoses out and prescribing more dope for it. Then it becomes part of the patient's history and is carried on as a pre-existing condition. The ER is probably not going to do this, they aren't focussed on ongoing care.

As fewer people are covered by the insurance they have been paying for, the ERs will continue to get busier.

Just my $.0199

Good Health to All of Us,

Ladylove
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