A bigger problem that is missed in the article is that emergency rooms, by definition, treat emergencies. By the time something like diabetes or high blood pressure or cancer becomes an emergency, it is generally too late to do any good.

This morning I lost a brother-in-law for just that reason. He went to the emergency room for heart problems, but his diabetes that he didn't know about because he hadn't been getting regular checkups had already destroyed his kidneys so there wasn't a whole lot they could do for him.

Since hospitals can't treat sick patients for free, so the costs are passed on to everyone else.

Lets say that the insurance negotiated price for some procedure is 1X. Someone who is uninsured gets charged 2X that by a hospital. If they don't pay their bill then that represents a 1X profit as an tax writeoff against profits. Basically a form of tax fraud that gets paid for by general tax funds.

This is such a mess. The emergency rooms are set up to treat emergencies, and the influx of sick people who have no other recourse is clogging up the system.
On the patient's side, they pay dearly for the wrong kind of care. Once they are stable, they're sent home with a referral to a primary doctor. If they can't access one then they won't get well.
And our tax dollars are keeping the emergency rooms open, because we depend on their life-saving treatment.
Maybe we can convince the public that the lack of insurance is a slow-motion emergency that is killing Americans.

So when I need radiation and chemo and drugs that cost $44,000 per year, I just go to the emergency room... Who knew?

Each year Congress approves legislation called medicare improvement acts. In each bill is disproportionate share hospital funding to compensate hospitals for the care of the uninsured. Amounts vary by state to the tune of billions, but one way or the other taxpayers are footing the bill. Republicans vote yes for these every year as do Democrats with bipartisan support.

I showed up at the emergency room for my annual physical and they just laughed at me.

DC General's Emergency Room should be designated as the Congressional Republican & Blue Dog Medical Plan. The rest can keep using Bethesda Naval Hospital

So Republican'ts do believe in government funded universal health care (the emergency room), they just believe that it should be provided in the most inefficient, costly and inhumane way possible.

The Republican'ts health care plan is that you don't get sick if you can't afford to pay for it and if you do get sick, you should die as quickly as possible so they don't have to hear you complaining about not having health care.

if you come in with say a heart attack, the er is legally obliged to treat you to the point that you are "stabilized" ... i.e. the immediate emergency has passed. any treatment beyond that is up to the good graces of the particular hospital ... and in many cases phase 2 of your care is to be shown the exit and told good luck ...

I wonder what would happen if EVERY UNINSURED PERSON in the US should up at the same day, same time at their local emergency room.

Probably very unfair to the ER personnel, but the whole stupidity of the "everybody's covered" argument would be laid to rest, especially when the hospitals billed it - I'll bet it could spike health care costs for the whole US up a couple of percentage points.

Insane.

Does one go to an emergency room for a check-up?

In what universe is a mother going to take a child with an ear infection to sit for 12 hours in an emergency room for treatment?

How about going to an emergency room to get that odd looking freckle checked out?

Emergency room for a mammogram?

Yeah, you know, you can go to the ER for chemo! And for dialysis. And if you have an injury, the ER will surely provide occupational and physical therapy. NOT.

You have to wonder-- are they just lying, or do they really not know? Of course, none of them ever go to an ER at a public hospital with a sick child and wait 8 hours in the waiting room as the doctors and nurses deal with heart attacks, gunshot wounds, and burn victims.

In what universe is a mother going to take a child with an ear infection to sit for 12 hours in an emergency room for treatment?

A universe where she doesn't have any other choice, because she doesn't have insurance or a primary care doctor.

Your other examples make sense but, believe me, there are thousands of mothers (and fathers) sitting in emergency rooms right now to get their children's relatively mild complaints treated because they have nowhere else to go.

Thugs: idiots and/or liars.

No insurance? Get sick? They'll take your house, your car, sieze your bank account and retirement, and put you out on the street homeless.

THEN you can go to the emergency room and the bill will be passed on to the taxpayers anyway.

What logic.

I was in an emergency room once with my husband who was in extreme pain from kidney stones. While my husband drifted in a morphine-snooze, I listened to the conversation in the next cubicle. A doctor was explaining to a man complaining of shortness of breath that his condition was caused by severe emphysema, a result of the patient's continuous exposure to toxic fumes at his job, and that there was nothing the ER could do for him. "Do you have insurance?" the doctor asked, and the patient - who was maybe 40 - said, "No." The doctor gave him a couple of suggestions for free clinics, but you could hear the hopelessness in both their voices.

The ER doesn't always treat people. My brother showed up in a hospital with appendicitis. When the hospital learned he didn't have insurance, they sent him home. His appendix ruptured that night. It was only when he was actually dying of sepsis that they finally decided they actually had to treat him. Even after suing the hospital and settling out of court, my brother still paid a lot more than an appendectomy costs.

2 Saturdays ago I woke up wih a tremendously infected finger.I have Medicare and went to the emergency room. I received a bill for what Medicare did not cover. The amount of the statement was $660.00 less Medicare credit of $523.28. My share which will be covered by my medicare supplement was $34.50. So Medicare paid $102.22 but without Medicare and as a walkin with out insurance my cost would have been $660. Who is kidding who.

I am alive because, thanks to my government provided health care, I have had two mastectomies, chemotherapy and a pacemaker. None of these are provided in emergency rooms. The argument is nonsense.

The Emergency Room is for EMERGENCIES. I wish someone would ask these Republican no-minds what they would do if they or a family member had an emergency - car crash, maybe - and showed up at an Emergency room and told they had to wait because of everyone else who was there getting the day-to-day things treated.

These Republican no-minds would be very upset if they could not get immediate Emergency care in the Emergency room. I'd love to be a fly on the wall...

There has to be some smart intern/blogger/stringer willing to spend a few nights in an ER in King's district and report on what happens.

These a$$-holes should try it sometime.

A couple of years ago, after being sent home the same day, after full anesthesia for a procedure, I had to go back, because anesthesia does bad things to my elimination system. (I had warned them about this, but they paid no attention.) I waited three hours for some relief. Not a long time as such things go but when they finally got around to me they told me that I had been a few minutes away from serious damage to my kidneys. If it had been a Monday (I waited 10 hours for a bed a few months later, nursing pneumonia) I might have been consigned to a lifetime of dialysis, or worse.

And I have insurance (Medicare and Blue Cross). The ER's are nightmares because they are the only resort for many people who don't have insurance. This impacts everyone and probably kills people who have coverage as well as those who don't. It could have killed me. I think I'll call Mr. King's office on Monday.

Well as far as just showing up at a hospital to get treatment goes, you better show up at the right hospital because when I took someone with acute appendicitis but without insurance to Watsonville Hospital in CA, they refused to admit him and instead forced me to drive him an additional fifteem (15) miles to a different hospital where wee were told he would have died if we were any later in arriving.

So I'd just like to say Fuck You to John Boner & his lying sack of shit Repuke Party.

The "they can always go to an emergency room" line always remingds me of this story, http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/radio/la-me-dumping16nov16,0,1231362.story, where three Los Angelos hospitals were caught dumping disoriented patients in downtown L.A.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office filed false-imprisonment and dependent-care-endangerment charges against hospital giant Kaiser Permanente on Wednesday, the first criminal prosecution of a medical center accused of "dumping" patients on skid row.

The charges stem from an incident earlier this year when a 63-year-old patient from Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital was videotaped as she left a taxi in gown and socks, and then wandered skid row streets.

A Kaiser spokeswoman on Wednesday said she was "very surprised" by the charges.

I think the Republicans have something of a point. And it's one I wish the Democrats would listen to.

(of course, it may mean less now that the House has passed its Health Care bill)

The point isn't *where* people go for health care, it's how they pay for it. This whole friggin' debate isn't about health care, it's about *paying for* health care... most specifically, health INSURANCE.

I wish people would stop talking about "health care reform" and accept that we're debating health INSURANCE reform".

Yeah, emergency rooms. My brother's girlfriend came in and they couldn't get rid of her fast enough, despite dizziness and actually fainting again before they'd signed her out with instructions to contact a brain specialist. She left constant messages on his machine and her calls were never returned. She flew to her sister's wedding, got out of the plane, and was rushed to the hospital, where she died of a brain tumor and excessive bleeding from it.

Yeah, that emergency room "insurance" really saves lives.

I would simply point out a little error in your second to last paragraph. All emergency departments are required by law to take all comers, regardless of the their ability to pay. You are correct that it costs the system a lot of money, but it is not just public EDs who treat the uninsured.

You can't get a mammogram, or a colonoscopy, or a pap smear at the emergency room.

So if you rely on emergency rooms for your "health care," you run the risk of premature death caused by failure to receive preventive care and/or timely diagnostic tests.

Oh, and you also can't get chemotherapy or radiation at the emergency room.