The GOP/TPers have had over 3 years since ObamaCare was signed into law ... and this is their best idea for replacement??? ~ ~ Sooz

DeMint touts emergency rooms over insurance
By Steve Benen - Thu Aug 22, 2013 10:21 AM EDT

Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), now the head of the Heritage Foundation, continues to help lead a far-right crusade against the Affordable Care Act for reasons that aren't altogether clear. Yesterday, DeMint brought his traveling circus to Tampa, where he made his pitch to a few hundred supporters (and more than a few opponents).


Ah yes, the emergency-room argument. You don't need basic coverage for you and your family -- forget insurance and rely on the folks at your local E.R. This pops up from time to time -- Mitt Romney was using it less than a month before the 2012 election -- but in case anyone's forgotten, let's set the record straight again.

It's true that under the preferred Republican system -- the U.S. system before the Affordable Care Act became law -- if you were uninsured and get sick, you could probably find public hospitals that would provide treatment.

It is, however, extremely expensive to treat patients this way. It's far cheaper -- and more medically effective -- to pay for preventative care so that people don't have to wait for a medical emergency to seek treatment.

For that matter, when sick people with no insurance go to the E.R. for care, they often can't afford to pay their bills. Those costs are ultimately spread around to everyone else -- effectively creating the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised.

Indeed, since hospitals can't treat sick patients for free, the bills can bankrupt those who get sick, and the costs are still passed on to everyone else.

But wait, there's more.

For those with chronic ailments, DeMint's position is laughable -- is anyone going to stop by the emergency room for chemotherapy or diabetes treatments?

The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage. The Republican plan to deal with this national scourge doesn't exist -- the plan is to destroy what took generations to approve, and then hope for the best.

Obamacare's critics are offering a cruel joke, and little else.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/22/20136858-demint-touts-emergency-rooms-over-insurance?lite

Fewer and fewer people are paying attention to those of his ilk.

I hope so no one listens to that idea. ERs cannot turn people away. In NJ and I don't know how many other states they have Charity Care. In other words, the state pays for the poor to come to the ER at a rate where the ER is losing money. Without this program, the ERs would go out of business, and some of them have already.

The state of New Jersey has a program to provide reimbursements to hospitals and other health-care institutions which provide uncompensated or undercompensated health care to patients lacking private health insurance whose income falls below a certain amount but is too high to qualify them for Medicaid and are not old enough to be eligible for Medicare (New Jersey's situation is somewhat unique among American states in that the state has no county or municipal hospitals).

The scheme provides free health care to uninsured state residents whose income is up to 200% of the federally designated poverty line, and provides discounts which gradually phase out at incomes between 200% and 300% of the poverty line; the patient's liquid assets (not including the patient's home and one automobile) must not exceed $7,500. Also, the maximum any individual qualifying for aid under the aforementioned criteria can be liable for in a single year is 30% of that patient's gross income for that year. A special fund was designed to compensate the health-care provider—which may have furnished either inpatient or outpatient services—for the applicable difference in cost. However, New Jersey hospitals are reimbursed for charity care at below their cost to provide these services, which helps account for the fact that in the past two years, nine hospitals have closed in the state and six others have filed for bankruptcy, according to the New Jersey Hospital Association.

Some private health-care providers in other states—particularly those that are operated on a nonprofit basis (often by religious entities)—also provide free and/or low-cost health care to uninsured patients, using income thresholds similar to those observed statewide in New Jersey; but state laws vary widely as to how much, if any, reimbursement (usually in the form of tax credits) the institution receives for so doing (and in only one other state besides New Jersey—Washington—does an outright mandate exist to provide charity care).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_care