Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblong
I went to teh emergency room with my dad back in February. Most of the people there DID have insurance and needed to be there. How do I know this? I don't. I'm just making it up, like he did.
|
I spend about a full day a month in the ER with my MIL, both in the waiting room and back in the examining room with her. (She has dementia and is unable to answer questions appropriately, etc.) The thing I find outrageous is how many are there all day long waiting for a hospital bed upstairs. On our last trip, she went by ambulance at about 8:30 a.m. They did some tests and decided to check her in to the cardiac unit by noon. It was almost midnight before we finally went upstairs to a room. The nurse told me that it's not uncommon to have patients being treated in the ER hallway.
I can tell you that the old people who go in have insurance: medicare. And I can also tell you that medicare (i.e. government insurance) is part of the problem. They only reimburse a very small percentage of the charges, yet by law the patient can't be billed above what medicare allows. The hospital has to absorb the difference. Guess who pays for that? The uninsured and those with private insurance.