I keep hearing about how we treat people who in hospitals and then the state pays for it if they don’t have insurance… and I call bullshit. I was hospitalized without insurance, I got this thing called a “bill.” There’s also people who are kicked out of hospitals and denied medical treatment because they can’t pay.
Where is this magical free healthcare the government was paying for?
Oh, it IS possible to get free health care in some parts (probably not all, and probably a shrinking percentage, but I don't profess to know) of the US. It's done via "county hospitals", which take in patients regardless of their financial status. The standard of care is actually pretty good -- they're entirely secular and hiring from the same pool of doctors as other hospitals, after all -- but the facilities tend to be much less lavish than for-profit hospitals (including religious hospitals).
ReplyDeleteOh, and they also employ huge batteries of people whose sole purpose is to find out if the people who have been treated have any assets at all, and if they do, to bill them for the care. You only get free care if you genuinely cannot possibly pay for it. If you own a car, for example, they'll get you to sell it to pay for your operation.
Still, these places do exist.