What should happen to someone without insurance who needs emergency healthcare?
If you are against universal healthcare (mandated, or government supplied, or whatever), what do you believe should happen to someone who chooses not to have health insurance and needs emergency medical attention they cannot pay for?
Say, for example, they are in a car wreck with no one else at fault and they need emergency surgeries or they will die. They will also need lots of post-op therapy. Say it will be $100K all told by the end of it. Should they receive the treatment and go into collections from the hospital? Should they be able to declare bankruptcy later on? Should they just be left to die?
2014-07-05T19:13:53Z
I know how it works currently. People get treated, they can't pay, and the cost gets passed on to everyone else. Obviously this is a problem. What's the solution, apart from mandated or provided healthcare, which seems pretty unpopular?
?2014-07-05T19:26:25Z
why doesn't the person have insurance would be my question- for example my neighbors spend an excessive amount of money on booze and smokes and complain they have no cash for food- I consider this "their bad"- after working in a low income area as a teacher I have seen first hand that how and where you spend your money is more important than how much you make- I know people that make over 200k a year and are in debt up to their elbows and people that have money in savings making 50k a year-
if this is someone who has no insurance because their parents are my neighbors or they are elderly and can no longer pay- then I have no problem helping them
the issue is weeding out all of the abusers which is virtually impossible
If they've been aggressively hostile to being responsible and getting insurance, they should be forced to pay the bill, full stop. They shouldn't be allowed to declare bankruptcy on it either - that should be held over their selfish *** until it's paid off, with interest.
That way people might realize the benefit of insurance. It's a profoundly selfish and stupid thing to do to refuse to pay in and then expect services anyway. Conscientious objectors should be allowed to fall without a safety net, but we shouldn't have to clean up the mess.
our society has said that leaving them to die is unacceptable. I assure you that's exactly what does happen in many [presumably less advanced] societies. The hospital stabilizes them and discharges them. end.
there are some people who simply refuse to be responsible. Darwin described the outcome they get from Universe. I'm not sure that we're wise enough to flaunt Universe's decisions.
And then there's the Singapore way -- health insurance is mandatory [so is auto insurance]. if you truly can't afford health insurance, the government will pay for it. [not so with auto insurance, like other civilized countries, if you can't afford auto insurance, you don't drive the car. period. offenders get jailed and the car is seized.]
it also occurs to me that anyone who refuses to be responsible for his or her own self in this way [buy health insurance] probably isn't responsible enough to be managing their own affairs and certainly shouldn't be voting or owning a gun. That suggests that someone else be appointed to handle their money, contracts, and other tasks requiring responsibility.
Per the law the Ronald Reagan signed, you cannot be denied care when you visit an emergency room. Incidentally, and a bit ironically, one of the roles Michelle Obama had when she worked at the hospital she did, was to get people who could not pay moved out of her hospital to other places as quickly as possible.