[trimethylpurine]

And that's different from other countries how? I can walk into a hospital in any country in Europe as a non-citizen and request non emergency care and receive it?

>Many employers do not provide coverage

For under 50 employees, making less than 50k, Healthcare.gov covers those cases. You can visit there now to confirm my claim.

And yes, it means you can get care in the US. I brought my Euro girlfriend here and she got care under a bullshit name. And they treated her, the same as any other patient. And she never paid anything. It was non emergency and we went to an emergency room anyway.

Do you have a counter example? If so please share.

[gregjor]

Counter examples that don’t involve fraud, as you describe? Yes, many, but I don’t see any reason to try to refute the nonsense you posted.

[trimethylpurine]

The point is that hospitals in the US indeed treat anyone with or without ID. Emergency or not.

I'm not sure what point you were making, or refuting, but I didn't catch it.

[gregjor]

You got lucky. US hospitals routinely turn people away for non-emergency conditions. That probably happens everywhere but I was only responding about US medical care.

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/obligation-prov...

[trimethylpurine]

What you linked to is a legal description and critique. While it represents the legal imperative, it's not representative, I don't think, of actual medical care.

It wouldn't make sense to risk your license or insurability. It's a bad business decision both for the doctor and for the hospital to send you home without care and discover later that a more serious condition was underlying the symptoms presented as non-emergent. It makes sense to at least check, and in so doing, treat. And if treating to provide the best care possible to avoid liability.

If you have examples of hospitals doing otherwise as a matter of practice I'll be interested to understand how that business model is possible.

As far as I've researched, I've only found cases where the hospital was sued and lost. Doctors fired or jailed. Etc.

The situation is that by requiring emergency care (which is subjective) the law creates enough risk that the de facto mode of operation is to treat all cases where risk is a factor, which is very nearly all cases.

[gregjor]

Millions of Americans without medical insurance cannot get routine care. That can happen for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons comes down to hospitals and clinics refusing to give non-emergency care for free. I don’t need to provide anecdotes for an endemic problem that gets studied at the federal policy level.

Personally I have experienced wait times approaching infinity, the hospital not denying care, but not providing it either, because people with insurance or cash get to the front of the queue unless an indigent person bleeds out in the ER.

If you go to an ER and need diagnostic tests for a real but non-emergency condition you will likely get referred to a diagnostic clinic, a place that only does tests and does not provide medical care, and that’s where your journey will end if you don’t have insurance or cash up front.

Try to get prenatal care in the US without insurance or cash. Possible to find programs for low-income uninsured people in some cities, but not everywhere by any stretch, and getting worse every year.

Talk to homeless people and advocates about people who cannot get treatment or medications because they have no insurance or money. Hospitals won’t dispense things like insulin until you go into shock in the ER, assuming you can get to one.

[trimethylpurine]

In my state the wait is under 8 minutes for ER care. So, I can't relate.

Yes, you're required to fill out forms and participate in the system. And therein lies the rub. The people that don't have care are those who are not capable of filling out and keeping up with all the forms. Or are otherwise unwilling to do so. And that's exactly how it goes in Europe too. You don't just get to walk into any hospital with no ID and no registration (aka insurance) and get non emergency care. That's pretty comparable. And even with their "free" care they still have to pay for private treatment from the same doctor anyway so they won't have to wait a year for non emergency surgery.

At worst you can say our forms are longer, and more complicated. But you can't say it's not socialized. If you fill out all the forms you get the same care at the same price as Europe (if you count taxation) and at least in my state, there's no line for the hospital and I can see a doctor in a few days, usually, for specialty stuff.

And objectively, we have more broke people entering this country and still living long enough that our life expectancy is on par with countries that have a tenth of the immigration rate and a lesser poverty rate. So medically speaking, we're pretty miraculous, all things considered. So says the data.