Saturday, October 18, 2003
Unenforceable Laws
I have spent the past few days researching the Federa Anti-Dumping Statute (the Emergency Medical and Active Labor Act) and how the statute is applied in New York. Technically, Congress designed this law to prevent hospitals from denying treatment to patients who lacked insurance or lacked adequate insurance. There is some technical jargon that I am really leaving out, but that part doesn't matter.
Why doesn't it matter? Cause the law is rather bullshit.
Why is it bullshit? Cause the standards are too low.
Under the statute hospitals have a duty to screen and a duty to stabilize. The screening standard means that they have to examine every patient in the same way. If an uninsured patient goes in with a stomach ache he has to get the same level of care that an insured patient would get. BUT, the screening standards are low. It is hard to prove any disparaties. All the case law I have read basically says that if the doctor looks at you, you have been screened.
Which brings me to the second problem. The duty to stabilize only applies to maladies that the doctor has detected. Which means that if you get an inadequate screening and they due not detect something life threatening and you die from it, the hospital will not be found to violate the statute.
So, a hospital cannot transfer you to another hospital unless they stablize you. If they don't detect your problem, they don't have to stablize you. They can send you anywhere so that you are no longer their problem.
SO WHY DID CONGRESS WRITE SUCH A STUPID LAW
I really think it was just to shut people up. Poor people were being turned away from hospitals and Congress needed to look like it was doing something. So, they made it tiny bit harder for hospitals to turn people away, they gave hospitals tiny cracks to jump over before they let poor people die. Poor people are expendable if it means keeping other people's medical cost down.
We can't fight all causes, all the time. Pick your causes. Then follow what is happening around them carefully. If you fight for everything you won't be able to keep track of anything very well. You may think Congress has done something when in fact they have done nothing. So, follow what they have written and THEN follow how it is applied.
That way, when a young child gets hit with a snowball and ends up severely retarded cause the hospital that transfered him never detected the brain abscess, his mother will have a way to sue the hospital that transfered him in order to get the money to take care of him for the rest of his life. (see the Fisher case out of New York)
I have spent the past few days researching the Federa Anti-Dumping Statute (the Emergency Medical and Active Labor Act) and how the statute is applied in New York. Technically, Congress designed this law to prevent hospitals from denying treatment to patients who lacked insurance or lacked adequate insurance. There is some technical jargon that I am really leaving out, but that part doesn't matter.
Why doesn't it matter? Cause the law is rather bullshit.
Why is it bullshit? Cause the standards are too low.
Under the statute hospitals have a duty to screen and a duty to stabilize. The screening standard means that they have to examine every patient in the same way. If an uninsured patient goes in with a stomach ache he has to get the same level of care that an insured patient would get. BUT, the screening standards are low. It is hard to prove any disparaties. All the case law I have read basically says that if the doctor looks at you, you have been screened.
Which brings me to the second problem. The duty to stabilize only applies to maladies that the doctor has detected. Which means that if you get an inadequate screening and they due not detect something life threatening and you die from it, the hospital will not be found to violate the statute.
So, a hospital cannot transfer you to another hospital unless they stablize you. If they don't detect your problem, they don't have to stablize you. They can send you anywhere so that you are no longer their problem.
SO WHY DID CONGRESS WRITE SUCH A STUPID LAW
I really think it was just to shut people up. Poor people were being turned away from hospitals and Congress needed to look like it was doing something. So, they made it tiny bit harder for hospitals to turn people away, they gave hospitals tiny cracks to jump over before they let poor people die. Poor people are expendable if it means keeping other people's medical cost down.
We can't fight all causes, all the time. Pick your causes. Then follow what is happening around them carefully. If you fight for everything you won't be able to keep track of anything very well. You may think Congress has done something when in fact they have done nothing. So, follow what they have written and THEN follow how it is applied.
That way, when a young child gets hit with a snowball and ends up severely retarded cause the hospital that transfered him never detected the brain abscess, his mother will have a way to sue the hospital that transfered him in order to get the money to take care of him for the rest of his life. (see the Fisher case out of New York)
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