Die, poor people, die. We get it. :rolleyes:

I didn't say it was...however, an MI is an emergency, not a routine doctor's appointment. Ambulances don't pick and choose their patients based upon who has insurance. It's now illegal in MA to be uninsured anyway.
Healthcare should be a right anyway-everyone is entitled to try and prolong their life as much as possible. Having lived in a country with free healthcare and one where healthcare is privatized, I've seen both sides of the fence and I can see the need for improvement in both systems.
I don't know why the nurse wouldn't call him an ambulance. From hearing all the horror stories of Fallon clinics, I'm not surprised though. The standard of care seems to be low.

How does that work? That's pretty much a fee just for living. If I HAD to be insured, and my husband didn't work at a huge corperation with great insurance, we couldn't afford it. And I'm pretty sure we wouldn't qualify for Medicaid.

Wouldn't it be standard of care for the type of medicine, not necessarily for the type of facility? We talked about this quite a bit in class, about the standard of care being somewhat fixed. That may be more CT tort law though, so I could be wrong.

Does this mean you think health care is in fact a "right"?

Also, I'm pretty sure the "standard of care" is not set by the facility - minor nitpick on Kevin's point, but that's my understanding of the standard. I would be shocked if there is no action against the facility, given the description of the actions of the nursing staff.

ETA: (ksigkid posted this at the same time as I did)

This has been the case for the cases I've worked on, which include states in every time zone. IANAL, obviously, but again - reasonable professional, blah blah blah.

I know Blue Cross Blue Shield have come out with some very inexpensive plans that provide very good coverage. My company uses Fallon for health insurance which I'm not wild about so I was looking at the BCBS plans. I use them now and I'd like to keep them.
http://www.getbluema.com is the website for their plans. There's also Masshealth and the medicare/medicaid programs but I don't know the qualifying factors for those. Masshealth is a pretty decent program as well. I would say that this law is the one good thing Romney has done for the state because it's pushing companies to be more flexible and allowing people to get insurance and good healthcare.

Torts was so long ago :)

Whatever the standard of care is will usually be defined by whatever your local legislature, in its wisdom has decided that it is. I'm pretty sure you're right -- the locality rule wouldn't really talk about the type of facility, just the type of medicine. Still though, the standard of care in an overloaded emergency hospital in the worst part of town under the locality rule would be different than say the Yale-New Haven Hospital unless you were one of those national standard folks.

Then, the standard would still have to be established by expert testimony.

Haha, sorry, don't want to dredge up all the 1L stuff. I actually had a talk with my torts professor about this very point, i.e. it not making sense to hold small community hospital A to the same standard as big educational medical center B. I'm pretty sure CT does precisely that, and I think that's one reason why CT medical professionals are trying hard to revamp the med-mal system here in the state.

If you want to read a solid book on the topic (you know, in your free time, haha), Damages by Barry Werth talks about a family going through the med-mal system.

I think it's a nationwide movement. We recently shot down a massive tort reform bill here in Oklahoma (governor vetoed it). Amongst numerous things like a 300K cap to noneconomic damages in ALL suits, it included such gems as making the safety records of nursing homes undiscoverable and making it so that a class action suit couldn't be brought for the non-payment of oil and gas royalties. Good stuff.

Die lazy people, die.

If poor = lazy, a higher mortality rate is great for our economy. I'm not saying we round them up in concentration camps, but I'm certainly not going to advocate that society go out of its way to prolong the lives of people who refuse to contribute to it.

This is a horrible situation! :( That was so wrong of them to let that poor woman lie there in agony. Unfortunately, some hospitals have staff that have little to no patience and especially for repeat situations in which they feel aren't "life threatning". I'm pretty sure her family will sue someone or they may offer her family compensation to avoid bad press...

It wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of pain drug addicts start hitting this hospital complaining of chest paints, etc.

already been happening...and some of those addicts are out selling thier meds on the street too.

How we reform the system is going to be critical. Going to more public health care run or managed by the state is going to get us more situations like the one in the OP rather than fewer. I don't want poor people to have bad health care, but I'm not interested in all of us getting the kind of care that they get as a way of equalizing the system.

In general, public health facilities are bad. Anyone with a choice doesn't seek treatment in them. More public facilities to get the costs under control equals more crappy care for you and me. Walter Reed anyone? Anybody read the mental hospital series in the Atlanta paper?

The profit margin is probably one of the big reasons most of us have the quality of care we do. Take it away, and it's going to be hard to figure out what will motivate good or excellent care.

In the dropping of the grandfather example, I'm a little confused. Unless the people moving grandpa did something specifically negligent when they dropped him, aren't they going to have some built in limits to what they can collect?

The dropping may have made the surgery necessary, but it didn't in itself cause the fatal infection. I'm sure the jury might be somewhat sympathetic, but really, had he successful recovered from the hip replacement, would you still feel the same, his family is entitled to money?

Is the term I'm looking for proximate cause, maybe?

Ambulance service is $500.00 a trip and is part of the KCKS FD! KC Ksw.

There was a law I beleive that said any hospital is required to tend to a trauma or emergency treatment. Try that and see how it flys?

I got sick in my store and a friend took me to the nearest hospital. Some old paper pushing crone wanted my Insurance card. Hell, I was delerious and had no idea what was going on.

G W told her, Lady get a Fu*king Doctor in here now. He has Insurance! She sputtered and stammered and he looked at her and said I will kick your damn ass now!

60 Minutes this last Sunday showed how indigents were dropped on the streets with otehr homeless. Of course they were besides them selves!!! This is not our policy, RIGHT!:rolleyes:

The three biggest money making businesses are Oil, Health Insurance, and
Pharmachaticals. Biggest lobbiest and covered very well by our duly elected Morons!:mad: