The "E.M.T.A.L.A."

Did you know that it's a Federal Law hospitals must provide healthcare services to anyone who comes through the front door?  

Or through the side door, or the back door, or down the chimney?  If it has a chimney?

Not just broken arms, we're talking victims of gunshot wounds and heart attacks and strokes?  The truly expensive stuff.  The $5,000-a-day stuff.  Great, if they pay.  

Disastrous, if they don't.

That's because during the 1980's ultra-large hospital management corporations arose, with most smaller, community-level hospitals then selling out to those "for-profit" concerns.  Like HCA Health Systems, and Tenet Healthcare, and Community Healthcare Systems (CHS).    

And those publicly-traded hospital corporations learned early on that treating indigent "bums" (I use the term inclusively for those who cannot/will not pay) was a loser.  And I might mention, if the "customer" just wandered across the Border, without our permission, but at O'Biden's invitation, he likely doesn't have an address.  Or a job.  Or health insurance.  So if he gets sick and finds himself in the E.R. at the local hospital, there's nobody to bill, and nobody to sue for non-payment.

So hospitals actually paid teams of folks to pick these people up at their E.R.'s and dump them in front of inner-city, publicly-funded hospitals.  And it was actually called "dumping."  This was a big legal scandal back in the 80's, and a number of hospitals were penalized $Millions.

Patients who did have assets but couldn't pay were ripe for collection proceedings back then.  Whereas the local hospital was always willing to work with their neighbors, when these new corporate owners took charge, the neighborliness went away.  They could, and did, sue anyone, for anything.  Creating a generation of families who'd been sued into bankruptcy for the inability to cover their medical debts.  

"Medical bankruptcy," as it was called.  I know many who suffered through this painful reality.  Shameful.   

So the Feds put out the word, no bum dumping allowed!  And the bums started dying in the alleyways around the community hospitals.  So Congress, in its infinite wisdom (cough, cough), passed the E.M.T.A.L.A.  It stands for the "Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act" of 1986.  And it stated, clear as day, that hospitals must take "emergent" patients, without regard to the ability to pay.  Emergent means they'll bleed to death without treatment.  

And hospitals would be in violation if they didn't obey.  As in, they'd take it in the shorts if they kicked out the indigent.  And the Feds told them they just might just stop covering Medicare reimbursements if they didn't.  Which in many community level hospitals, this could represent more than 60% of all their revenue.

And oh yeah, they'd take in the shorts if they DID take in the indigents, so they're in a LOSE-LOSE situation.  Just one more instance of the Federal Gubmint mucking things up by getting involved.

So what did these hospital do?  Like any good businessman who'd been kicked in the nuts by the Gubmint, they raised prices to offset the pain.  In some cases they doubled their charges.  Even tripled them!  

You've heard of the $10.00 Tylenol, right?  Sort of like the big chain restaurants are raising their prices in Taxifornia to offset BoyGuv Newsom's new $20.00 an hour MinWage.  Which could very well bankrupt many if not most of these restaurants, especially if customers stop coming.  Because, once again, they cannot afford to pay.  And/or they're just pi*sed at being screwed over and over.  By that same Gubmint, doncha' know.  

Are you getting the idea that when Gubmint gets involved, the lowly $Taxpayer almost always loses?

So hospital charges skyrocketed, making these new HospCorps $Millions.  Except when those hospitals find  themselves in the midst of a calamity, a catastrophe, a natural disaster, not of their own making, 

like a flood of illegal aliens rushing across the Border. 

These hospitals are treating dozens, even hundreds, who cannot pay.  And will not pay.   And so the hospital might just go bankrupt as a result!  Like its patients did 4 decades ago!

Oh, the irony!

What brings this to mind is the only hospital in El Paso County.  The County where hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have crossed the border illegally.  And some of them, more than a thousand of them, have needed medical care.  Births, deaths, wound care, exhaustion, any reason at all.

And the hospital cannot say no!  Even though they know there's not a chance in Hell they're ever recover a Dime of their costs.  Must less "profits," just their costs.  And Brownsville Medical Center is more than $20,000,000 (with an "M") in the hole because of decisions outside its control.  It is losing more than $500,000 a month!  Because of decisions made more than 1,700 miles away.  Joe O'Biden opened the border and may kill this hospital.

The Only Hospital in the County.

Another example?  Sure.  Thomasville Hospital in El Paso stated it lost more than $1,000,000 in the first three months of 2024!  A county-level hospital cannot sustain loses like that!  

One more?  Of course.  You've heard of Parkland Hospital in Dallas?  The hospital in which President John F. Kennedy died?  That one?  73% of the live births in that hospital last year were to the "undocumented."  That means "illegal aliens."  Paid for by Medicaid.  Or rather, by you and me.   

Is this fair?  Does anyone care if this is fair or not?  Does the Gubmint have any plans to reimburse these tiny county hospitals?  Or will they refuse to fix a problem of their own making because these are little  hospitals in Red Counties in a Red State?

The odds are about 1 in 100.  Against.

Do the Democrats really want to leave El Paso County with 888,000 citizens...and No Hospital?