My point is asking what your point is. I thought you might be making a point about how private hospitals and health insurance companies could better serve the mentally ill than a government run program.

My point is that....



is applicable. Do you disagree?

How does this being a state hospital matter one way or another in this case? Private or public, unless you meet a very narrow and strict set of criteria, if you have no cash and no insurance, both state and private hospitals can and will turn you away, no matter how bad you feel or how sick you actually are.

The law says that if you are in imminent danger of death (e.g. -- bleeding severely from wounds, dieing from a fall, car accident, shooting or stabbing, heart attack, brain aneurism), something dramatic that will kill you in minutes or hours that can be treated without long-term care, they HAVE to treat you, and if you can't pay they have to eay the cost of your treatment.

If you merely have leukemia or AIDs or psychosis or a brain tumor or dementia or cripplng rheumetoid arthritis or pancreatic cancer or lymphoma or lupus, or any number of fatal conditions that will take your life away slowly and without leaving large puddles of blood on the floor or sidewalk, they will dump your ass on the sidewalk. Public AND private. No hospital will pick up the cost of radiation and chemo for your brain tumor. If you have no insurance, sell your house, and they'll treat you until that money is spent and gone, and when you're broke, they stop your treatment and let you DIE.

That's how we do it in America.

In the meantime, down the hall in the ICU a 101 year old man with severe dementia and bedsores who's been fed by a tube for the past 8 months because of his debilitating stroke is getting a free pacemaker, triple-bypass, and medication to the tune of $300,000.00 or so, give or take, because he had Medicare and back-up secondary insurance that will pay for this expensive futile treatment. Expensive, over-blown, futile care is lavished on the undead brain-dead elderly, costing Medicare millions every year, to treat what amounts to elderly carrots and potatoes with no mind to speak of. Poor kids with Hodgekins Lymphoma die quietly at home because their familes aren't *quite* poor enough to get Medicaid, but too poor to pay the tens of thousands of dollars that could likely produce a cure in a child with decades of potential productive life ahead.

There's a real gap that people fall through in our health care system, and it's stupid and immoral and unfair. The only possible moral thing to do is legislate health care.... provide the entire population with a basic health insurance policy so that nobody has to die from a treatable disease for lack of funds. The wealthy can purchase their own high-end insurance, so they don't need to bitch and moan about having to settle for "government-run health care". We need to take care of our population at least as well as we take care of our highway systems.... and it will cost money, and taxpayers will have to pay for it. We'll have plenty of money to do that if we stop trying to export democracy to the Middle East and take care of our own shit first.

I wish we could designate the way our tax monies were used to fund things. I don't think very many Americans would choose to fund the Iraq War before taking care of the poor, sick, and hungry at home first. I sure wouldn't.

I was simply trying to clarify who was running this hospital. The description of being dirty and unsanitary with unobservant, uncaring staff sounds like a management issue to me and not an issue of health care philosophy in general.


With all four statements, categorically? I don't know. I mean the first three sentences are all interconnected amplifying on the how the "medical system is rotten." I'm not sure how broad the statement is intended to be. Obviously there is something rotten going on at Kings County Hospital.

As for the 4th statement I need a little clarification. What is meant by "the market" which is "controlling American health care." What is this "martket" we're talking about and how does it apply to Kings County Hospital?

Well then I guess you just need to move. Because that may be the way things are in New York and maybe Connecticut, but that's not the way things are in Arkansas. Here, you get emergency treatment in our hospitals whether you can afford it or not. And if you can't afford it, then those who can afford it end up picking up the tab.

I know, I know. Sounds pretty socialist, doesn't it, but we're a pretty caring bunch down here in the South. You know, the "red" states?

Considering that she died on the waiting room floor, I'd say all of them.

If you’ll take a second look at what Helice wrote, you’ll see that you are both saying the same thing. In both states: you get emergency treatment in either public or private hospitals whether you can afford it or not. Most states define “emergency” in pretty much the same way.

You are right on when you say, “And if you can't afford it, then those who can afford it end up picking up the tab.” But isn’t that the problem? The legislated requirement for all hospitals to provide free emergency treatment must be passed on to the paying customers—the people that are sick and can afford to pay (whether out-of-pocket or through insurance). So we have one class of sick people paying for another class of sick people! That is one of the things that is driving up the cost of health care. Wouldn’t it more equitable for all of us to pick up the tab for treating the genuinely poor that have a genuine life-threatening emergency?

To make matters worse, the insurance companies all negotiate contracts with the hospitals (and doctors) so that they get charged waaay less than “list price”: in my experience between half and three-quarters of what the poor SOB that has to pay out of his own pocket. Take a close look at your statements that you get from your health insurance carrier.

There is another good point made by Helice. Because they have no access to non-emergency care many of the poor attempt to use the emergency rooms as walk-in clinics or must wait until they become life-threateningly ill. That ultimately just drives the cost up some more.

I’m not proposing “Socialized Medicine” (a ‘red’-flag that is used derisively, like ‘Liberal’), but there must be a better system. Based on our poor health-care quality to cost ratio, some of the other countries may have some good ideas. Perhaps we should stop being so partisan and reach across the aisle on this subject (for a change).

The population of the state of Arkansas is approximately 3 million, and the population of Brooklyn 2.5 million.

I suggest that any state with a less dense population and less gang and drug related activity and probably less mental illness per capita as well, will have hospitals which do a better job taking care of people.

It isn't about red or blue states, it's about number of hospitals vs. average number of patients per hospital.

I suggeste that most Arkansas hospitals also do not accept long-term care patients who havea no means of payment.

Wow! I take back my invitation. We don't need a bunch of mentally ill, drug-addicted gang-bangers invading our state. Y'all stay up there where you obviously belong.

I didn't think her situation was an emergency that would require any hospital to take her in. I don't really know too much about it.

It would probably help we don't let ourselves get sidetracked by people with political agendas. The problem in the story posted by Lizbeth revolves around the apparent complete absence of care/professional responsibility exhibited by the staff at one particular medical facility.

I am in total agreement with ordering an investigation, heads rolling, and procedures being better codified AND enforced in the future.