These fucking people:
Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) proposed on Friday that hospital emergency rooms should be able to turn patients away to help keep health care costs down.
“I’m an emergency room nurse,” Black told MSNBC host Chuck Todd on Friday. “There are people that came into my emergency room that I, the nurse, was the first one to see them. I could have sent them to a walk-in clinic or their doctor the next day, but because of a law that Congress put into place to say, no, I have to treat everybody that walks into that emergency room.”
“You took away our ability to say, ‘No, an emergency room is not the proper place.’ And then, you put a burden on top of that to say, ‘You must do that,’” added the congresswoman, who is also running for governor of Tennessee.
At issue is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which was signed into law by former President Ronald Reagan in 1986. It was a congressional response to stories of “patient dumping” ― hospitals would deny treatment to patients or send them elsewhere, usually because the individuals didn’t have insurance. Many of these patients were unemployed or were people of color.
Those transferred individuals were more likely to die, and the delayed care often jeopardized the patients’ health.
The law put a particular focus on pregnant women (hence “active labor” in the law’s name), to ensure that they would be able to deliver their babies and receive full care.
Changing the law, as Black advocates, would send America back to a time when hospitals can use their discretion to turn people away.
We have a real shot to win this Governor race because the GOP primary is a clown car of bozos like Black. Luckily, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean (D. TN) is in the race and he’s a strong supporters of Medicaid Expansion:
Dean dutifully gave his stump speech, which centered on public education, jobs and economic growth and healthcare, but he became most excited when speaking about healthcare.
He said state legislators made one of its biggest mistakes of the past 30 years when they didn’t vote for Medicaid expansion in 2015. Since then, Dean said the state has left some $3.5 billion on the table.
“That has hurt us. And it’s hurt us in a very human way that I don’t think we should ever lose track of,” he said.
“When you don’t do Medicaid expansion it doesn’t mean people won’t get sick,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean that people don’t still need to go to the hospital or go to a doctor. It just means they’re going to have a real hard time with paying their bills.”
Click here to donate and get involved with Dean’s campaign.