Rural hospitals have trouble treating poor; should they just treat fewer of them?

[Hantlers]

If I remember correctly, they have to treat them if it's life-threatening, right? Not if they come in with a cold or something.

 

[One Brow]

Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant by "everybody". The hospitals don't have to treat patients without emergency conditions, but they still have to screen them sufficiently to determine if the condition qualifies as an emergency or not.

Here, rather than take the Medicaid expansion, the Georgia governor suggested allowing hospitals to not treat uninsured patients with emergency conditions, presumably. I can't imagine his position is that emergency rooms should refuse to see patients before determining if there is an emergency or not.

 

[babe]

I think you have confused profit with revenue. The more revenue you get, the more you can pay doctors. Pretty much any Catholic hospital or univeristy-owned hospital will be non-profit, but many of them are the best hopsital in their area.

my wife worked for one of those Catholic hospitals.

However, when the government passes laws that essentially mandate people do such-and-so it amounts to a "tax" on those organizations, whether they are for-profit, or not, unless the government also will pay for the mandated services. uhhh...... unless, I mean, some taxpayers are taxed more to pay for those services. . . . .

Before the government passes such laws, charities like the Catholic hospitals could use some sort of discretion of their own in formulating their own decisions about providing charitable service, to the extent their funds would support.

After the government began handing down edicts on protocols and service, even "charitities" had to respond by raising the "price of service" to those who could pay. This means, simply put, that it was another "graduated operating tax" on the hospitals, which all in turn passed those expenses on to their paying patients/responsible parties. The very rich, like my dad, could donate a million to the charity, and save, in his time, six hundred thousand dollars in "income tax", and would thenceforth get some kind of deal on his own services, which proved to be a good deal for him. Made money on it, in effect. I'm sure a lot of other pious liberals with cash cow operations enough to donate to "charities" or political parties, for that matter, also turn a profit in the long run for doing so.

So, in reality, the mandates choked the middle class and made healthcare for them more and more unaffordable. The ACA is doing the same thing. . . . .

to add insult to injury on middle America, letting thirty million non-citizens come in and use those services has reduced Americans to third-world economic realities. . . . .

socialism has always been a thieving business. . . . . always will be.