Health Reform Threatens to Cram Already Overwhelmed Emergency Rooms

The Hill ^ | May 15, 2010 | Jay Heflin

[T.L.Sink]

The new healthcare law will pack 32 million newly insured people into emergency rooms that are already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts. The idea was that if people have insurance, they will go to a doctor rather than putting off care until they faced an emergency. People who build hospitals, however, say newly insured people will still go to emergency rooms for primary care because they don't have a doctor.

[T.L.Sink]

Get ready, because this will affect all of us: A drastic shortage of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals that will guarantee long waits, a decline in the quality of health care, as well as an insufficient number of hospitals. It needn't be elaborated upon that this trillion dollar boondoggle has already put future generations in hock.

[rdl6989]

People will go to the ER just to get attention and guess who pays for it.

[J Edgar]

Ask Nancy P. - She knows what’s UP - she even advises Popes!

[MaxMax]

Fact is, Working people will suffer the most because they not only pay but
rarely have time to see a doctor unless they need care. The unemployed welfare lifers
and elderly will live in the lines leading around the side of the hospital.

By the time anyone gets in to see a Doc there will be nothing left on
the shelves because of restrictions on funding. Welcome to the nightmare.

Oh, and every drug head will have a back ache to get drugs to sell and
according to Zero they cannot be turned away. Happy days.

[dalebert]

good by healthcare.

[Secret Agent Man]

A good percentage of doctors will retire if Obamacare isn’t repealed. We could easily lose a quarter of all doctors by their own surveys.

[Domangart]

It's been changing for some time. Each nurse can oversee three people (by law). To be admitted you must pass triage. otherwise you receive a diversion to a er clinic or sit and wait with the four or five friends that you came with. During the day you can visit a Med Seven or something like that. What I do see if this happens is a walmart clinic operated by someone. They exist today, they are called the US Medical “corpse”,

[sten]

of course they would. is this supposed to be a surprise to anyone? really??

seriously... how much longer do i have to put up with this crap? and exactly why should i be forced to fund their idiotic spasms?

[T.L.Sink]

Right! And all we have to do to see the coming catastrophe is to look at the nations of Europe. Their affluent people come here so they don’t have wait months for important surgical and other medical procedures. And, as the article points out, we can just look at the mess in Massachusetts right here in the USA. By the way, Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician, has pointed out that in Britain the regulated and state caps on physicians has resulted in every other doctor there being an Indian or Pakistani.

[T.L.Sink]

I know! What nerve! We here in Florida have a description for people like that. It applies to males but I think she qualifies too - “balls bigger than cocoanuts!”

[T.L.Sink]

Exactly. Not only will we see many give up their practices but - even if they didn’t - the sheer number of new patients will swamp them.

[T.L.Sink]

I know what you mean. We can only hope that a conservative Republican Congress defunds this socialism and changes policy before it’s too late.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I think you’re quite right. The elites in the US have learned that the biggest pot of money to steal is from the ordinary, faceless, J6P. This is why Al Gore wants nothing so much as a surtax (payable to him) on each and every homeowner’s and renter’s utility bill. If they can get away with providing 50% of what J6P now expects in the hospital ER while charging 80% of what J6P is currently paying, that is a staggering amount of money. And they’ll be able to crow over the savings they’ve created. You’re right: The worst pain will be suffered by the lower to middle class working families who think they’re getting a bargain when the DMV takes over their healthcare.

[FastCoyote]

[Welcome to the nightmare.]

The nightmare will make Freddy Krueger look like a comedy. There is no mechanism to slide from one system to the other. There will be massive avoidance of the mandate, massive paperwork unfiled, massive cost overruns, a run on hospital care, a collapse of the insurance industry, a doctor and nurse shortage, hospital closings, etc. It is completely FUBAR.