Health Insurance and Emergency Rooms

By Fester:

One of John McCain's senior healthcare advisers has an amazing statement about insurance that I am still trying to confirm did not come from the Daily Show or the Colbert Report:

the numbers
are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for
Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman,
who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone
with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the
government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms
by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So
I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman
said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive
order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing
any American � even illegal aliens � as uninsured. Instead, the bureau
should categorize people according to the likely source of payment
should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

So the best way to solve a problem is to become intentionally ignorant.  Wow, and these are the supposed grown-ups in the Republican Party.  When in doubt, find some sand and stick your neck into it.  This worked great for the New Orleans levees, the Iraqi insurgency and the birth pangs of democracy, the dismissal of a CIA briefer who delivered a report saying that Bin Laden is Determined to Strike the United States as a mere act of ass covering.  Ignorance, and more importantly intentional ignorance has worked so damn well.

More importantly, this is an amazingly stupid policy as emergency rooms specialize, shockingly, in emergency/crisis care.  Most people don't need crisis care; they need ongoing non-intensive services to maintain good health and full productivity. Sending people to the emergency room for non-emergency care is a good way to bankrupt the system. 

For instance, several years ago I damaged a knee.  The pain was sufficient that I needed to see a doctor in relatively short order to have a diagnosis and a potential prescription.  I went to a primary care clinic that my insurance covered, and then was referred to a specialist for further work.  This still led to significant out of pocket expenses and total societal expenses.  If I went to the emergency room for a non-emergency but painful as hell injury, and then returned for follow-up care, I would have used up several times the resources. 

Furthermore, the emergency room is the ideal place to perform routine physicals, screenings for cancer, pre-natal care and treatment of a damn nasty viral infection that turned my head into a snare drum last winter. 

How out of touch can someone be to suggest that there is universal coverage in the United States because emergency rooms are not allowed to let people die on the doorsteps.