This is from Joel A. Harrison, author of our recent feature, Paying More, Getting Less, which provides a novel argument in favor of a single-payer health care system.
The issue of long waits at emergency rooms has been in the news, and even the Institute of Medicine has looked at the problem of "divert status," where ambulances are told by the nearest emergency room they are filled up and they need to go to another more distant emergency room. One story told of an ambulance spending 45 minutes before finding an emergency room willing to accept a patient.
Keep in mind that divert status has nothing to do with being insured! Some of the reasons are: 1. Because emergency rooms can't refuse treatment, they lose money on the uninsured, and many hospitals are closing their emergency departments; 2. Patients who are uninsured or underinsured use emergency rooms for primary care and/or wait until their conditions get serious, thus ending in emergency.
Now a new article in the online magazine Slate adds one more nail in the coffin of the profit-motive in health care, which puts us all at risk. Notice that in "socialized-medicine" England, the government requires and enforces that 98% of patients be seen within 4 hours. Of course, since everyone has health insurance and a family practitioner, one of the reasons for crowding is eliminated.
Notice also that American hospitals are fighting tooth and nail against even keeping waiting statistics. A recent report by the Commonwealth Fund put United States dead last in ability to get medical attention at night and on weekends among advanced industrialized nations, and poor placement in getting to see primary-care physician within 48 hours.
Waiting Doom
How hospitals are killing E.R. patients.
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