Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mass. Health, A Creator Explains, Pt.2 – The ‘free-riders’.

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The current health insurance plan has opinions on both sides, good and bad. But, as Mr. Romney asserts, there are ‘invaluable’ lessons to be learned. The first topic shared by Mr. Romney is to clarify the misconception that people with no health insurance do not receive medical treatment. A little publicized fact is that some of these people without health insurance do show up in emergency rooms (some desperate, some just abusing the system). ‘Some’ is qualified here because we do not have good statistics as to who these people are nor how many people simply forego treatment out of guilt, fear or just hopelessness.

There’s some ‘fuzzy’ federal law requiring ER’s to provide treatment for those without health insurance “usually at no cost to [the patient].” That is, ‘no financial cost’. Emotional costs can run very high, especially for a struggling family that owns a house and striving to pay mortgage, provide food and the phenomenal expense of maintaining a low-paying job, like car insurance, repairs, $4 / gallon fuel and maybe a little heat in winter. They will be ridden with threats and harassment from the many separate medical billing entities and collection agencies. As far as the ‘federal requirement to provide treatment, many have found that, of the five area hospitals, all of the ER’s still say “no”, except for the one that is 25 miles across town. Even the few left, seem to take hours in processing while a patient bleeds to death. For these poor families without health insurance, the treatment is no free ride.

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