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Should hospitals be forced to give emergency care to the poor?

Should hospitals be forced to give emergency care to the poor?


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Oh look, another person who doesn't understand that a right to life does not entitle you to the service or property of others. Not surprisingly, it's a pro-abort left-winger.

Typical "pro lifer", nothing to see here.
 
Oh look, another person who doesn't understand that a right to life does not entitle you to the service or property of others. Not surprisingly, it's one of the pro-abort left-wingers.

What? This is a thirty year old Reagan era law. This is for hospitals that receive Medicare supplements. The only problem with this is that stubbed toes, head aches and sore throats end up there, and a hospital emergency room isn't structured to handle that effeciently. But all us tax paying Americans should want everyone to have emergency medical care.
 
you just don't let anyone die or suffer in the street...jesus would not..
 
Private hospitals should not be compelled to give their services away.

On the other a society that lets it's poor die in the street because they can't afford medical care is not a society I'd care to live in so I see a legitimate role for government in insuring a minimum standard of care for the poor either through government managed hospitals or government picking up the cost for medical care for the poor.
 
The key word is "forced." The initiation of force is fundamentally wrong.
 
Oh look, another person who doesn't understand that a right to life does not entitle you to the service or property of others. Not surprisingly, it's one of the pro-abort left-wingers.

you want to save the unborn baby but ignore the living ones.that is why you are never reliable.libertarianism doesnt approve everyone's right to live ?
 
you want to save the unborn baby but ignore the living ones

I want the right to life to be protected against aggression.

Which means that I want aggressive killing to be prevented or punished. That is what a right to life means, it is the basis for a law preventing someone else from taking your life.


You dying because you don't have property / currency to exchange for goods or services has nothing to do with rights aside from noting that you do not have a right to make someone else provide you with goods or services.

People exchange goods and services in a voluntary manner because they get what they want out of the exchange - that's the free market. Sometimes people choose to provide currency or goods or services for free for someone else - that's charity.
 
I want the right to life to be protected against aggression.

Which means that I want aggressive killing to be prevented or punished. That is what a right to life means, it is the basis for a law preventing someone else from taking your life.


You dying because you don't have property to exchange for goods or services has nothing to do with rights aside from noting that you do not have a right to make someone else provide you with goods or services. People exchange goods and services in a voluntary manner because they get what they want out of the exchange - that's the free market.

Thin pieces of paper shouldn't determine whether someone has to live with pain or even die in my personal opinion. One surgery can put a person into debt for the rest of their life. If my appendix ruptures today and I could barely make ends meet financially then I would basically have to choose between dying or putting myself into massive debt. That's not a choice.
 
Thin pieces of paper shouldn't determine whether someone has to live with pain or even die in my personal opinion. One surgery can put a person into debt for the rest of their life. If my appendix ruptures today and I could barely make ends meet financially then I would basically have to choose between dying or putting myself into massive debt. That's not a choice.

Your house could burn down and you might end up homeless...in the winter...with the possibility of freezing to death. But if you have that thin piece of paper you are protected. Do you think the government should provide you with a replacement house just because you don't want to buy that piece of paper?
 
you want to save the unborn baby but ignore the living ones.that is why you are never reliable.libertarianism doesnt approve everyone's right to live ?

You could have attacked his position on the two issues in a far better way. As your argument stands you show a fundamental misunderstanding of what the right to life means. The right to life means that you have a right to be free of aggression towards your life, not that you have a right to healthcare treatment from another persson.
 
Private hospitals should not be compelled to give their services away.

On the other a society that lets it's poor die in the street because they can't afford medical care is not a society I'd care to live in so I see a legitimate role for government in insuring a minimum standard of care for the poor either through government managed hospitals or government picking up the cost for medical care for theue poor.

They are not forced. They just would lose a truckload of revenue if they did.
 
Do you think the poor have a right to life, and therefore emergency medical care?

In the Philippines, if you don't have the money, you don't get the treatment. Except for a couple (very, very underfunded) public hospitals, if you can't show ahead of time that you've got money for the treatment you need (even in the emergency room), then you will not get medical treatment there. Even then, once you're in the hospital, if you can't pay anymore, then you'll be kept there essentially as a prisoner until you can pay.

So...that's life in a place where there is no "right to life" and "right to emergency medical care". Is that really something we want to see here?
 
Thin pieces of paper shouldn't determine whether someone has to live with pain or even die in my personal opinion. One surgery can put a person into debt for the rest of their life. If my appendix ruptures today and I could barely make ends meet financially then I would basically have to choose between dying or putting myself into massive debt. That's not a choice.

Due to the system we have thin pieces of paper will more than likely be what people want in exchange for providing you a service, but that isn't necessarily the case. While it might be distasteful to you it is best that people pay for their own medical treatments so that everyone enjoys lower prices.
 
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Your house could burn down and you might end up homeless...in the winter...with the possibility of freezing to death. But if you have that thin piece of paper you are protected. Do you think the government should provide you with a replacement house just because you don't want to buy that piece of paper?

My house burning down and being homeless isn't the same thing as a life threatening surgery that I can't afford though. I can call for help, I can stay with family or friends, I can even get food and shelter temporarily if my house were to burn down, but I can't not get a ruptured appendix taken out or something else that is truly life threatening. For many people they actually have to choose between going to the hospital or taking a chance with their life all because of the extreme cost of healthcare, especially surgery, even with insurance it is still expensive for many people. I can replace a house, I can't replace myself.
 
Due to the system we have thin pieces of paper will more than likely be what people want in exchange for providing you a service, but that isn't necessarily the case. While it might distasteful to you it is best that people pay for their own medical treatments so that everyone enjoys lower prices.

But the prices aren't really low though unless you have good insurance and even then depending on the procedure it can still take you years if not decades to pay off all because of something that was totally out of your control. All I am saying is that there has to be a better way.
 
But the prices aren't really low though unless you have good insurance and even then depending on the procedure it can still take you years if not decades to pay off all because of something that was totally out of your control. All I am saying is that there has to be a better way.

Having people get healthcare for free just causes prices to increase as the hospital has to make up what they lost from providing the free treatment elsewhere. I know people think Reagan had his heart in the right place by ordering hospitals to treat people that couldn't pay, but it was very bad decision on his part that only made the problem worse by making it so even more people couldn't afford care.

What needs to happen is government needs to stop subsidizing and requiring employers to provide healthcare insurance for their employees. The current system provides people with no incentive to shop for value and thus price competition is all but eliminated from the market. The current system does however provide a huge instinctive for hospitals to mark up their prices as they know insurance companies will pay them. Not only that but due to the ability of hospitals to make insurance companies pay doctors will make sure to provide wasteful defensive medicine, so they can get even more money. What needs to happen is that people need to pay in full for their own treatment, so doctors are forced to be upfront and honest in their pricing.
 
You could have attacked his position on the two issues in a far better way. As your argument stands you show a fundamental misunderstanding of what the right to life means. The right to life means that you have a right to be free of aggression towards your life, not that you have a right to healthcare treatment from another persson.

if they refuse to cure you it really means an agression .
 
Having people get healthcare for free just causes prices to increase as the hospital has to make up what they lost from providing the free treatment elsewhere. I know people think Reagan had his heart in the right place by ordering hospitals to treat people that couldn't pay, but it was very bad decision on his part that only made the problem worse by making it so even more people couldn't afford care.

What needs to happen is government needs to stop subsidizing and requiring employers to provide healthcare insurance for their employees. The current system provides people with no incentive to shop for value and thus price competition is all but eliminated from the market. The current system does however provide a huge instinctive for hospitals to mark up their prices as they know insurance companies will pay them. Not only that but due to the ability of hospitals to make insurance companies pay doctors will make sure to provide wasteful defensive medicine, so they can get even more money. What needs to happen is that people need to pay in full for their own treatment, so doctors are forced to be upfront and honest in their pricing.

Ok but what if they can'f afford to pay a bill of $10,000 or more? What if someone is doing everything they can to make a living and going paycheck to paycheck and healthy as they can assume to be only to develop a medical condition needing urgent medical care, then what? If they can't pay the bill upfront and it will take decades to pay it off is that really the best system?
 
Another way of wording this question would be "should we repeal EMTALA?" It was signed into law by Reagan.

Another way of wording it would be "should emergency care be considered a public good?"

If it should be considered a public good, everything about it needs to be funded via taxes collected by the government that establishes it as a public good. Having for-profit entities deliver this public good will not work.

A central problem to regarding emergency care as a public good is that it is a variable individual benefit with potentially infinite cost, not a general benefit that provides for welfare generally. A related problem is that people will use this entitlement to get care for non-emergencies. Sometimes they're overtly malingering, other times they don't know if their symptoms constitute an emergency or not. Ask an ER provider how many patients they get complaining of shortness of breath or chest pains or dizziness that end up being nothing, a pulled muscle, an anxiety episode or some other benign non-emergency. Ruling emergencies out requires expensive tests, and tort risk compels providers to be exhaustive because if a discharged patient dies on the way home they will get sued.
 
if they refuse to cure you it really means an agression .

No, being refused service is neither aggressive or violent behavior. You are not attacked or forced to do anything when someone turns you away.
 
No, being refused service is neither aggressive or violent behavior. You are not attacked or forced to do anything when someone turns you away.

you may lose your life :shrug: :2brickwal
 
Why would a hospital turn away the sick? Or want to?

Why should a doctor work for free?

Fyi: I'm a proponent of a nationalized healthcare system but I don't believe that any doctor should be forced to care for anyone. They should be well paid for that services, whether by the receiver of care or by the taxpayer.
 
you may lose your life :shrug: :2brickwal

Yes, I might die from the condition I came to them with if they turn me away.
 
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