ER Overload

It's not only the uninsured. I worked in the ER and a large percentage of patients we saw were were either uninsured, illegal, or on Medicaid. Private physicians will only take a certain amount of new medicaid patients because the reimbursement sucks. Therefore, all of the patients with kids on medicaid come to the ER with all of their sniffles & sneezes because no one wants to see them for what they get paid. The ER doesn't get paid much either by them but we can't turn them away.
Then there's the illegal issue. Those that are illegal aliens that don't pay their bills do come in for free care because there's no way to tie the bill to them. So the rest of us end up footing the bill and illegals know it and take advantage of the system. They'll give you 3 or 4 different names and social security numbers that don't match and come back as aften as you'll treat them. And they know you HAVE to treat them whether they've got a cold or anything else. EMTALA flung the door wide open for us on that.
To "some-girl" - if you haven't worked a day in your life, no I don't think you "deserve" anything at the cost of those who do. Those that have this entitlement concept are killing our medical systems and other industries as well. This is why illegals think they are entitled to social security benefits when they've never even paid taxes here! makes me sick.

"Uninsured freeloaders" Hmmmm......that is very offensive. I have been forced to go to the emergency room while uninsured. That certainly does not make me a free-loader. In fact, my E.R. bill was ridiculously enormous! However, many uninsured people, including myself, find a way to pay, even if it takes a few years. I don't even feel a need to explain my situation. Everyone deserves access to medical treatment whether its someone who hasn't worked a day in his life or a young woman working herself silly at a job without benefits.
You lost my attention immediately. I no longer care about your research on E.R. overload. Instead, I'm nauseated and irritated by your cold introduction. I will find my information elsewhere.

"Uninsured freeloaders" Hmmmm......that is very offensive. I have been forced to go to the emergency room while uninsured. That certainly does not make me a free-loader. In fact, my E.R. bill was ridiculously enormous! However, many uninsured people, including myself, find a way to pay, even if it takes a few years. I don't even feel a need to explain my situation. Everyone deserves access to medical treatment whether its someone who hasn't worked a day in his life or a young woman working herself silly at a job without benefits.
You lost my attention immediately. I no longer care about your research on E.R. overload. Instead, I'm nauseated and irritated by your cold introduction. I will find my information elsewhere.

America can't afford to pay for everyone's insurance. We can't even afford our current financial obligations. We have to change the mind-set that our government has to provide for us whenever we have an emergency. The medical comunity is only ONE example of a field that is in dire need of reformation.

I had a primary care doctor once... he was even a relative. He dropped me from his patient list after three years because I hadn't been sick and he expects all his patients to be sick at least once a year.

Shortage of Doctors? Nurses? They are overworked! There's also a Truck Driver shortage... why? Over work! When young people are looking at a career, and they see that if they become a Doctor they are going to have to work 80+ hours a week, 60 - 70 hours a week as a Driver, 50 , 60 plus hours as a nurse.... it doesn't matter what the pay is, they know they will have no life outside their jobs!

I am a primary care physician and I feel that the comments about reimbursement are right on target. Who cares if everyone has insurance if it pays so little that doctors can't make ends meet and thus refuse to accept it? With my loans from medical school, it has already come to the point that I would not recommend that anyone in medical school go into primary care. You can work the same hours and get paid a lot more if you are a specialist, or even if you are a PA working for a specialist. I like my job, but it is a daily struggle.

I've been an ER nurse for 5 years and have worked in three different states. What is written here is only partially true. What I see far too much of is people either not having regular doctors or never calling their doctors when they are sick. Even people with insurance will often come to us first because the doctor wants his co-pay up front before he/she will see you. For the most part ER's don't ask for co-pays up front although some ER???s in FL have started asking for co-pays from non-emergent patients. I also have people calling an ambulance for a cold, a six-month old backache, and a toothache because they couldn't get a ride or didn't have money for the bus. Many of these people can find money for their cigarettes, but never have money for a ride. They come in with fake complaints of stomach aches so they can get a 'free' pregnancy test. They are miraculously better once they receive the test results. You see someone with a problem last week and they come back the following week with the same problem because they didn't take the prescribed meds or didn't follow-up with their doctor. Then they want to hold us responsible for them not feeling better. These are just a few of the things we see every day. Quite honestly it bothers a lot of nurses and doctors when we have to devote so much time, care, and dollars toward someone that you know will be back again and again because they want us to do our jobs as healthcare professional, but they are unwilling to do their jobs as patients...take the meds as prescribed, stop smoking, stop drinking, stop using drugs. In the course of a 12-hour shift the true emergencies are few and far between. One last comment, it is a common practice here in Cleveland for doctors to direct their patients to the ER for complaints that could have been handled in their offices. So some of the Primary Care Physicians are also feeding the problem of ER over-crowding.

I've been an ER nurse for 5 years and have worked in three different states. What is written here is only partially true. What I see far too much of is people either not having regular doctors or never calling their doctors when they are sick. Even people with insurance will often come to us first because the doctor wants his co-pay up front before he/she will see you. For the most part ER's don't ask for co-pays up front although some ER???s in FL have started asking for co-pays from non-emergent patients. I also have people calling an ambulance for a cold, a six-month old backache, and a toothache because they couldn't get a ride or didn't have money for the bus. Many of these people can find money for their cigarettes, but never have money for a ride. They come in with fake complaints of stomach aches so they can get a 'free' pregnancy test. They are miraculously better once they receive the test results. You see someone with a problem last week and they come back the following week with the same problem because they didn't take the prescribed meds or didn't follow-up with their doctor. Then they want to hold us responsible for them not feeling better. These are just a few of the things we see every day. Quite honestly it bothers a lot of nurses and doctors when we have to devote so much time, care, and dollars toward someone that you know will be back again and again because they want us to do our jobs as healthcare professional, but they are unwilling to do their jobs as patients...take the meds as prescribed, stop smoking, stop drinking, stop using drugs. In the course of a 12-hour shift the true emergencies are few and far between. One last comment, it is a common practice here in Cleveland for doctors to direct their patients to the ER for complaints that could have been handled in their offices. So some of the Primary Care Physicians are also feeding the problem of ER over-crowding.

How about the 24 year old medicaid patients that come in at 2 AM with complaints of migrain who has a history of migrains and insists on being admitted. This patient had all neccessary tests done while she was in the ER and any serious condition was ruled out yet the ER doc still admitted her because she insisted. Why do people get admitted to the hospital when they don't need to be? Hospitals are ran like big business. Customer satisfaction is job 1. It has turned patients and their families into monsters! I don't even want to be a nurse anymore. ER wouldn't be so crowded if they'd send home the patients that don't need to be there.
Sometimes the problem isn't that there aren't enough beds in the hospitals but that there aren't enough nurses to take care of the number of patients. You want to fix the nursing shortage? Pay nurses what they're worth! It's pretty sad that I could get a job in a factory with no education, in some cases not even a high school diploma and make more than I can make with a college degree as a nurse!
Patient education and noncompliance is another issue. If you skip dialysis because you don't feel good you WILL end up in ER. The reason you don't feel good is because you need dialysis! If you don't follow your diabetic diet, you WILL end up in ER. If you don't take your blood pressure medications or your heart medications you WILL end up in ER. And all of these will be true emergencies.

Hey email me for a Fake ID. I'll get you all the free ER care you want.

What a load of hyper bull and backyard investigation writing. No mention of the 30million illegals milking the system dry? Yeh how are you going to bill someone who has a fake ID? I love the picture of this article though.. Yeah im sure.. the ER is PACKED with middle class white people. Haha, what a joke. Oh i know, "im a racist" right? oh plz. Yes because the truth is racist. This country has become insane.

I never go to an ER unless I can't walk, someone has called 911 and it's by ambulance! This at least assures not sitting there for 10 hours.
I don't know why folks don't use the walk-in clinics more often. They're usually adjacent to the ER. If you're truly sick enough upon triage, usually you're moved to an ER.

Like Senator McCain says its a responsibility to have insurance, not a right because once given as a right a lot of people will be irresponsible and abuse the system since it will be easy and if free, they didn't work that hard for it and earn it so they won't care to use the resources that is meant for those really sick people.