It seems that many hospitals in this country are ignoring a 15-year-old law designed to keep hospitals from "dumping" emergency patients -- that is, refusing to treat them -- in this day of "managed" care.
That hospitals are ignoring the law is no surprise, really. After all, they can do so, if not quite with impugnity, then with the certain knowledge that any penalty will come months and years after the fact, and knowing that most such cases will never be caught at all. After all, it's simply very difficult to monitor such violations; if the patients or staff don't complain or make an issue of it, monitoring agencies will never know. Since most such cases involve poor or noncovered people, they're not likely to complain; it's just the way things are, and they're likely used to it.
Still, some of the local hospitals caught dumping are startling, to say the least. That Michael Reese is now involved isn't the least bit surprising; Humana hospitals have had problems with such things nationwide. However, that Provident would be involved is actually shocking; it is, after all, a public hospital and HMO coverage should not matter in the least. (That said, the HMO of the woman involved is pretty much a text book case for why a patient's bill of rights of some sort is required; it's utterly absurd that they would refuse immediate coverage for a woman experiencing a miscarriage in the waiting room.) The University of Illinois Hospital, again, is a public, state-funded hospital, and should not be involved in such things. Ravenswood Hospital was shredded in the local press for the case mentioned in the Public Citizen report; the shock there is that the fine was only $40,000 for letting a person die when he was literally up against the hospital wall outside. (I dare say the extraordinarily well-deserved malpractice suit probably settled at a much higher amount.)
Pity that the country wouldn't accept moving to a single-payer system for at least emergency care. That way, hospitals wouldn't have to care whether or not someone was covered by an HMO, or whether the HMO would approve them taking care; they'd know that they'd get paid, and perhaps the treatment people receive (medical and otherwise) would improve. Unfortunately, this country is never likely to tolerate the taxes needed to support any sort of single payer health coverage, no matter how limited.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!