RE: Repealing the Affordable Care Act will kill more than 43,000 people annually
January 25, 2017 at 11:25 am
The whole argument that as long as uninsured people have access to the ER they won't die suffers from fundamental misunderstandings of how health and healthcare works. The ER deals with curative / palliative care only, and usually only when the illness is serious. An uninsured person has to wait until they are seriously ill in order to go get medical treatment from the ER, and they still get billed for it.
What is more important to these people (and indeed most people) is preventative care, i.e. ensuring that they are healthy, and detecting problems before they become life-threatening. This is why you go to the doctor every year for a checkup (which you can only do if you have insurance), why you go to the doctor when some health issue occurs that you are concerned about (again, which you can only do if you have insurance).
While it may be true that the uninsured aren't just left to die, compare the likelihood of survival for a patient with cancer who has insurance and can therefore have it detected early and receive treatment, and a patient with cancer without insurance who has to wait until the cancer has consumed them before the ER can see them (and at that stage, I doubt very much if anything can be done).
What is more important to these people (and indeed most people) is preventative care, i.e. ensuring that they are healthy, and detecting problems before they become life-threatening. This is why you go to the doctor every year for a checkup (which you can only do if you have insurance), why you go to the doctor when some health issue occurs that you are concerned about (again, which you can only do if you have insurance).
While it may be true that the uninsured aren't just left to die, compare the likelihood of survival for a patient with cancer who has insurance and can therefore have it detected early and receive treatment, and a patient with cancer without insurance who has to wait until the cancer has consumed them before the ER can see them (and at that stage, I doubt very much if anything can be done).
