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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (767572)	2/2/2014 11:52:03 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574729

"And they provide excellent care, for the most part, to those who show up there." Dave, I need insulin twice a day. Should I go to the emergency room? Twice EVERY day?

To: i-node who wrote (767572)	2/3/2014 7:39:38 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574729

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 55% of U.S. emergency care now goes uncompensated. When medical bills go unpaid, health care providers must either shift the costs onto those who can pay or go uncompensated. In the first decade of EMTALA, such cost-shifting amounted to a hidden tax levied by providers. For example, it has been estimated that this cost shifting amounted to $455 per individual or $1,186 per family in California each year. However, because of the recent influence of managed care and other cost control initiatives by insurance companies, hospitals are less able to shift costs, and end up writing off more in uncompensated care. The amount of uncompensated care delivered by nonfederal community hospitals grew from $6.1 billion in 1983 to $40.7 billion in 2004, according to a 2004 report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, but it is unclear what percentage of this was emergency care and therefore attributable to EMTALA. Financial pressures on hospitals in the 20 years since EMTALA's passage have caused them to consolidate and close facilities, contributing to emergency room overcrowding. According to the Institute of Medicine, between 1993 and 2003, emergency room visits in the U.S. grew by 26 percent, while in the same period, the number of emergency departments declined by 425.Ambulances are frequently diverted from overcrowded emergency departments to other hospitals that may be farther away. In 2003, ambulances were diverted over a half a million times. In case you didn't read all of that: Approximately 55% of all ER visits are not compensated. The hospital and all the staff do more than half of there work for exactly no money and with the risk of incuring malpractice lawsuits. Hospitals negotiate contracts with managed care and commercial insurance carriers that specify prices much lower than the gross charges. Medicare and Medicaid dictate lower rates for medical services to hospitals.