There’s a popular myth that the uninsured—in Texas, that’s 25 percent of us—can always get medical care through emergency rooms. Ted Cruz has argued that it is “much cheaper to provide emergency care than it is to expand Medicaid,” and Rick Perry has claimed that Texans prefer the ER system. The myth is based on a 1986 federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which states that hospitals with emergency rooms have to accept and stabilize patients who are in labor or who have an acute medical condition that threatens life or limb. That word “stabilize” is key: Hospital ERs don’t have to treat you. They just have to patch you up to the point where you’re not actively dying. Also, hospitals charge for ER care, and usually send patients to collections when they cannot pay.
Howard Brody, director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities, has shown, 9,000 Texans per year will die needlessly as a result of our failure to expand Medicaid. The sick and the dying cannot speak out. Dying patients are too sick and wracked with pain to protest.
More than a million Texans are the working poor, or they are adults without dependent children, who cannot qualify for Medicaid in Texas, no matter how poor they are.
The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is no longer the state-subsidized charity hospital it used to be. UTMB administrators drastically cut charity care. Whereas UTMB accepted 77 percent of charity referrals in 2005, it was only taking 9 percent in 2011. UTMB ascribes these changes to financial strain from Hurricane Ike, the county’s inability to negotiate a suitable indigent-care contract and loss of state funding. The state blames budget shortfalls. The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, could have been a huge relief. However, Gov. Rick Perry rejected billions of dollars in federal funding to expand Medicaid, funding that should have brought access to more than a million Texans.
For patients, it means that seeking medical care will still require risking bankruptcy. For doctors, the message was not only that our patients’ lives don’t matter, but also that medicine will continue to be part of the economic machine that entrenches poverty. When the poor seek our help, they often wind up with crippling debt.
UTMB doctors now refer many to St. Vincent’s. St. Vincent’s House, which hosts the free clinic, is a historically African-American community center in the lowest-income neighborhood. UTMB will treat someone for a heart attack (because that’s an emergency covered by EMTALA), then refer them to St Vincent's for follow-up, even though it doesn’t have a cardiologist. They’ll stabilize a patient after her third stroke, put her on blood thinners and send her to St Vincent's. They once sent St Vincent's, from the ER, a man with a broken arm. They put the arm in a splint and referred him to us. What did they expect—orthopedic surgery? Put on a cast? It doesn’t even have an x-ray machine. Former St. Vincent’s leader Dr. Merle Lenihan has described the clinic as a “moral safety valve.” It protects UTMB from confronting the consequences of the state’s refusal to provide care.
Full article
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/texas-other-death-penalty
Howard Brody, director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities, has shown, 9,000 Texans per year will die needlessly as a result of our failure to expand Medicaid. The sick and the dying cannot speak out. Dying patients are too sick and wracked with pain to protest.
More than a million Texans are the working poor, or they are adults without dependent children, who cannot qualify for Medicaid in Texas, no matter how poor they are.
The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is no longer the state-subsidized charity hospital it used to be. UTMB administrators drastically cut charity care. Whereas UTMB accepted 77 percent of charity referrals in 2005, it was only taking 9 percent in 2011. UTMB ascribes these changes to financial strain from Hurricane Ike, the county’s inability to negotiate a suitable indigent-care contract and loss of state funding. The state blames budget shortfalls. The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, could have been a huge relief. However, Gov. Rick Perry rejected billions of dollars in federal funding to expand Medicaid, funding that should have brought access to more than a million Texans.
For patients, it means that seeking medical care will still require risking bankruptcy. For doctors, the message was not only that our patients’ lives don’t matter, but also that medicine will continue to be part of the economic machine that entrenches poverty. When the poor seek our help, they often wind up with crippling debt.
UTMB doctors now refer many to St. Vincent’s. St. Vincent’s House, which hosts the free clinic, is a historically African-American community center in the lowest-income neighborhood. UTMB will treat someone for a heart attack (because that’s an emergency covered by EMTALA), then refer them to St Vincent's for follow-up, even though it doesn’t have a cardiologist. They’ll stabilize a patient after her third stroke, put her on blood thinners and send her to St Vincent's. They once sent St Vincent's, from the ER, a man with a broken arm. They put the arm in a splint and referred him to us. What did they expect—orthopedic surgery? Put on a cast? It doesn’t even have an x-ray machine. Former St. Vincent’s leader Dr. Merle Lenihan has described the clinic as a “moral safety valve.” It protects UTMB from confronting the consequences of the state’s refusal to provide care.
Full article
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/texas-other-death-penalty
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