Woman dies in hospital while being arrested

[AlexMack]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

and again....the keys here are 'can' and state to state....

Matter of fact let me ask....

Kevin: Where you are, do citizen get charged for the ambulance should they require one?

People in DC and Baltimore City can be charged anywhere from $75 to $150 dollars "service and dischage fee" should you ever require one and bill it to you directly (before they send it to insurance....heh)

Lulz...that's a damn cheap ambulance ride. At my company, your insurance is getting billed around $800-1000. So when you hear me complain about medicare and medicaid abuse it's because of these people who are too damn lazy to take a car to their doctors appointments or the emergency room and just call us. We've had patients (regulars) who had to wait for a ride on one of our busy days and when they got tired of waiting their family came and got them. That kind of shit makes me so angry.

Also Alphafrog is correct-public, state-funded hospitals cannot refuse treatment. Private hospitals can. Here's a nice story for you: guy goes to a Fallon clinic (don't know if you know Fallon at all, but their clinics are infamous in my business, we go there a lot). He has chest pain, all the classic signs of an MI (heart attack). He doesn't have insurance. Nurse tells him there's nothing they can do because he's uninsured. Guy goes home, dead the next day.

[Kevin]

Free health care is not a right.

[AlphaFrog]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Free health care is not a right.

Die, poor people, die. We get it.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

Die, poor people, die. We get it.

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)

Originally Posted by KSigkid

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.

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.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

Die, poor people, die. We get it.

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.

[AlexMack]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Free health care is not a right.

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.

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

centaur....devil's advocate...

why didn't he go to another facility?

**Kevin yo do have a point BTW**

or...why didn't (or did she) the nurse refer him to a facility that would probably see him?

It's a messed up situation no matter how u call it but somewhere along the line one has to wonder what could have been done to save this guy's live...

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.

[AlphaFrog]

Originally Posted by centaur532

It's now illegal in MA to be uninsured anyway.

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.

[AlexMack]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

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.

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.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by centaur532

He doesn't have insurance. Nurse tells him there's nothing they can do because he's uninsured. Guy goes home, dead the next day.

centaur....devil's advocate...

why didn't he go to another facility?

**Kevin yo do have a point BTW**

or...why didn't (or did she) the nurse refer him to a facility that would probably see him?

It's a messed up situation no matter how u call it but somewhere along the line one has to wonder what could have been done to save this guy's live...

[OneBadZeta02]

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...

[Kevin]

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

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by Kevin

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.

[UGAalum94]

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?

[Tom Earp]

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!

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