Credit: Sarah A. Miller / Idaho Statesman / AP
In the early 1980s, doctors at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital faced an alarming trend: Thousands of patients from across the city were being transferred to the county facility, including patients whose conditions were unstable, making the transfers medically risky. Many patients ended up in the intensive care unit; others died.
Several years later, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study confirming that transfers had skyrocketed from roughly 1,300 in 1980 to nearly 7,000 in 1983. The study supported what doctors had observed, according to the Chicago Tribune: “that private hospitals in the area are shirking their duty to provide care to the needy.” Reviewing some 500 transfers from private medical facilities to the Cook County hospital over a one-month period, the study found that the vast majority of patients […]
Excellent framing of the history demonstrating that the devolution of our healthcare into the current form started under the Reagan administration as healthcare corporations first started dumping the uninsured into the public system to preserve profits, and then moved headlong into the cost shifting scam called “managed care”. EMTALA has been an essential safety net for millions over the decades. It will be interesting given that EMTALA is a Federal Law with clear guidelines, and a long history of jurisprudence, how the current conservative court will interpret what is clear language. Should the State win this it will open the doors to challenges at many levels further eroding what is left of a fragile system.
Another example of red vs blue states. A sad story for those who are held captive by this.
I totally agree with you, Stephan. These Republicans are “nuts” and do not care about the constitution which was “meant” to say that all Men AND Women are equal and both have rights to choose what to do with their own bodies!