United Liberty
Don’t blame the uninsured for emergency room visits
Tue, 09/22/2009 - 10:20am | posted by Jason Pye
The president and members of Congress claim that the uninsured must be held accountable for their care by imposing a substanial tax because they fail to take out coverage, despite only accounting for 2.7% of total health spending. However, a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in October 2008, says the uninsured are not responsible for crowded emergency rooms (emphasis mine):
The JAMA study also found that patients with public insurance, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are more likely to crowd into emergency rooms for minor complaints than are the uninsured. Only about 17 percent of E.R. visits in the United States in the last year studied were by uninsured patients, about the same as their share of the population.
That isn’t the only way people with subsidized insurance add more burdens to the system than people with no insurance at all. A 2007 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine looked at charges and payments for 43,128 emergency department visits between 1996 and 2004. “What surprised us was that uninsured patients actually pay a higher proportion of their emergency department charges than Medicaid does,” reported co-author Reneé Hsia, a specialist in emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “In fact, 35 percent of charges for uninsured visits were paid in 2004, compared with 33 percent for Medicaid visits.”
So why are emergency rooms so crowded? The JAMA study blames a rising population, a falling number of emergency departments, and understaffing that prevents stabilized patients from being admitted to other parts of the hospital.
The authors of the study realized this defied what was believed to be fact:
Unsupported assumptions include the beliefs that uninsured patients are the main cause of emergency department overcrowding, that uninsured patients have less acute conditions than insured patients, and that uninsured patients use the ER mostly for convenience.
“We have a crisis in the emergency department and we have a crisis with the uninsured, but it is crucial that we do not assume that the latter is causing the former,” [Dr. Manya F.] Newton emphasized.
“If we attempt to solve emergency overcrowding by creating policies based on inaccurate assumptions, common knowledge, or what ‘everybody knows,’ we will waste limited resources, fail to address the root causes of the problem, and potentially increase the barriers to care faced by 47 million uninsured Americans,” Newton concluded.
This won’t put the rhetoric to rest, but it is a important piece of information that needs to be put out in the debate.
if i understand their reasoning correctly, the reason they want this excise tax on those who refuse coverage is to cover them in case they ever show up anywhere for medical coverage. This tax is aimed at covering the cost of insurance companies being forced to cover pre-existing conditions as well as emergency room visits by people who refuse to buy coverage.
And of the 35% of uninsured that do pay for their care, how many of them go bankrupt doing so? How many skip eating for a few days/weeks or miss a mortgage or rent payment to pay their healthcare bill? Same could go for the number of underinsured that go bankrupt trying to pay off their healthcare debts, etc..
If you want to play silly numbers games we can and will make you look rather foolish, as well as inhumane.
The only important numbers are that 100% of the uninsured are uninsured and 100% of the underinsured are underinsured. And all of us, the uninsured, underinsured and the few well insured all end up paying the price in the long run.
“The only important numbers are that 100% of the uninsured are uninsured and 100% of the underinsured are underinsured. And all of us, the uninsured, underinsured and the few well insured all end up paying the price in the long run.”
Wow, it took you how long to figure that out?
No one ever questioned the needs of people. However, the reason insurance is so expensive is because of the barriers put in place by government.
Noooooo, the reason insurance is so expensive is because insurance companies and doctors can be very greedy. There is no reason why anyone should be charged $25.00 for one Tylenol tablet when in the hospital, and yet it happens every day. How about doctors charging fair prices for their services, insurance companies paying fair reimbursments for claims, and people being limited in their claims for malpractice to what is fair and neccesary?
The reason the prices are so expensive is because doctors, hospitals and insurance companies are left to pick up the tab when Medicare and Medicaid payments are slashed by Congress.
Obama repeatedly uses the words ‘choice’ and ‘competition’. He already showed Stephanopoulos that he doesn’t know the definition of ‘tax increase’, he apparently doesn’t know the meaning of these words either. I’m pretty sure ignoring state line restrictions and proposing people go to jail for not buying insurance proves this. Government barriers and intervention are indeed the reason why costs have skyrocketed, just don’t expect anyone in power to acknowledge this.
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