What Is It With the GOP and Emergency Rooms?
Steve Benen points to another Republican cheerleader for hospital ERs as the solution for Americans who don’t have health insurance:
Zaid Jilani reports on one of the more ridiculous recent comments I’ve heard about health care reform.
One of the most radical opponents of health care reform is Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA). He has said that a public option would “kill people.” Last Tuesday, Broun was confronted by a constituent at a health care town hall who explained that he has gone into debt because he can’t afford insurance for his major depressive disorder. In response to his constituent’s story, Broun said that “people who have depression, who have chronic diseases in this country … can always get care in this country by going to the emergency room.”
Now, I was glad to see the crowd boo in response to Broun’s answer. It represents a fairly twisted view of medical treatment, and the fact that Broun considers himself a leading GOP voice on health care makes his remarks all the more ridiculous.
Indeed, does Broun, who claims to be a physician by trade, understand that those dealing with major depressive disorders can’t just stop by the E.R.?
But in the larger context, Republican officials’ reliance on emergency rooms as a safety net is in desperate need of re-evaluation.
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First, it’s true that if you’re uninsured and get sick, there are public hospitals that will treat you. But it’s extremely expensive to treat patients this way, and it would be far cheaper, and more 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 pay their bills. Since hospitals can’t treat sick patients for free, so the costs are passed on to everyone else.In that sense, Broun and his cohorts have endorsed the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised.
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12 Responses to “What Is It With the GOP and Emergency Rooms?”
The ER is the public option already in place that they don't have to worry about competing with because the cost is so friggin high to go there. What they don't want is to save the public money by cheap or free preventative or non-triage healthcare. That's when they'll be forced to compete…
It's all about the dinero. And if I was a clever spindoctor for the Public Option I'd get one of these yokles to be all about the ER for the uninsured and then show them how the taxpayer gets reamed for this type of Public Option already in place vs the one that will cost the taxpayer less…being proposed…that they don't want come hell or high water…
For those interested the New Democratic Leadership Council has released a paper on healthcare reform. This group is more interested in getting things done than throwing partisan barbs.
http://www.dlc.org/documents/DLC_Bianchi_Health…
Nice to see there are some realists across the aisle.
I agree that this is the worst option for those without insurance. It is the most expensive and those who go for routine things clog up the system. Those who go for acute conditions usually can't afford the follow-up care and so wait until they are in acute distress again.
For someone with a chronic condition like depression, many doses and types of medication may need to be tried before the right med and dose combination is found, The patient may need therapy as well as meds. Regular appointments are the key to maintaining mental health. The ER's are not designed for that purpose at all. Someone who shows up with a chronic condition may wait for hours on end, while the more acute patients are taken care of.
The GOP should visit the emergency room to fix their own ailing party. Hopefully the doctors will begin by taking the party off hallucinogens and prescribe some happy pills.
The Karl Rove happy pills (“permanent Republican majority”) already proved to be hallucinogenic, though if it makes you feel better for the USA, almost everybody in the country knew this all along.
“New Democratic Leadership Council”
I view their 1990s “Third Way” warily, largely as a Potemkin Village (fake respectability facade). But their words, at least, show they've learned the lessons from Ronald Reagan and the 1980s, and of course the reaction in 1994 to the huge lurch leftward.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=128
DLS-
But has the GOP learned the lessons of 2006 and 2008, and the voting public's reaction to its huge lurch rightward?
Judging from its actions- it seems unlikely.
I think it's fairly obvious that no one in Congress – GOP or Dems – has had the pleasure of spending seven hours in an emergency room with acute bronchitis and a 104 degree temperature for a $750, single breathing treatment and a $60 prescription for antibiotics.
I'm not an ER nurse (I'm ICU), but my best friend is, and please, for the love of god, don't go the ER for anything but the most acute of conditions. Please!
Don't go because you think you might have crabs, or because your toe hurts or because you think you REALLY need that MRI at 2AM that your doctor prescribed three weeks ago and you never got around to getting it done. Don't go because you think you might be pregnant or because you're lonely and want someone to talk to or because you need somewhere to sleep it off.
All these reasons and more are why our ER is filled to the gills every moment, patients are on stretchers crowding hallways and no beds are available anywhere in the hospital for anything but the most serious of conditions.
As an aside, we had a fairly famous film director who was in town shooting a movie call our ER for a routine procedure and he was told: either come here and wait in line or make an appointment during office hours. One of the actresses, also fairly famous, did come in to the ER, waited just like you and me, and received treatment for something relatively minor.
Don't go because you think you might be pregnant or because you're lonely and want someone to talk to or because you need somewhere to sleep it off.
Oh, Vera. That's really sad.
Broun is one of the more embarrassing of a slew of embarrassing politicians from Georgia.
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