I wonder if doctors over here (especially “primary care physicians”, the US PC equivalent term for the “general practitioner”) will get the same idea once the Medicaid deluge hits our emergency rooms? (£10 = $16.46 ATTOW.)Charge £10 for A&E visits, say a third of GPs: Doctors want to impose basic fee to deter patients turning up with ‘trivial’ complaints
Actually, this fee is cheaper than a visit to a physician’s office, so this fee may actually increase ER visits.
In fact, I may want go there instead.
ER’s are open 24x7 whereas doctor’s offices are not.
And it is sometimes difficult to get in to see a family doctor whereas an ER doctor is always there or at least on call.
Many people, especially new immigrants from third world countries do not have a primary care physician. They go to the ER for everything another person might go to their GP for. Someone close to me who works at a local hospital ER told me that people were showing up on Christmas day to get stitches removed and for upset stomachs. This contributes greatly to ER wait times, which ran up to 7 hours.
Some kind of token user fee has to accompany services rendered under government health care.
Oh my—this would be like charging obamaphone users $5/month. We can’t have all 10 family members paying that, now can we?