People will die …

We’ve all heard this.

It’s the Democrat talking point on the Republicans’ replacement for ObamaCare. It’s the headline grabber from folks like Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi.

It does get your attention.

Like much of the stuff from the Democrats and the left, it’s simply not true.  Sure, people will die as they do all the time. Some of them will be poor.  But the lie that repealing ObamaCare will cause more poor people to die is the myth that keeps on giving. 

Get ready for commercials featuring families of poor people who died because they didn’t have insurance.  Expect interviews with people who fear they won’t get dialysis, kidney transplants, heart surgery or other life-saving procedures if Republicans get their way.

We’ll also see stories about the over 20 million uninsured that can’t get critical medical treatment, even for things like a stroke or heart attack, because they can’t afford it. 

Don’t get sucked in. 

No one – including non-citizens – can be denied emergency medical care in the United States. Anyone from anywhere can show up in practically any U.S. emergency room and if they have a medical emergency they will be treated.

Whether or not they have insurance.  Whether or not they can afford to pay.  Whether or not they speak English, Swahili, Pig Latin, or an obscure language from anywhere on this planet. Once they hit an emergency room of any hospital that accepts Medicare – which is pretty much every hospital in the country – they get treated. 

That’s the law of the land: The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) passed in 1986. ObamaCare didn’t create that. Republicans can’t overturn it.

In short, no one in this country will suddenly die from a heart attack, or an adverse reaction to medication, or even a gunshot wound, for example, because they don’t have enough insurance. The same applies to a woman about to give birth – she can’t be denied emergency room care because she lacks insurance or the ability to pay. 

Or because Republicans repeal ObamaCare. 

I got pulled into an exchange on Facebook the other day about this. Someone made a claim that a close friend had serious stomach pain but couldn’t afford to see a doctor so she died.

People piled on how this was the problem with healthcare in America. I brought up the EMTALA and how the friend didn’t need money or insurance to be treated – she just needed to get to a hospital. I got flamed 10 ways to Sunday, including by a women who wrote, and I quote: “Bullf***ing shit!” I provided a link to a government website as proof.

Then someone wrote, yeah, sure, you’ll get treated without insurance or the means to pay but when you leave the emergency room they are going to hand you a bill. 

Oh my God.  The nerve of the hospital. The bastards. How dare they …

So apparently that’s what this is all about: everything should be free. 

For the truly poor it actually is – you can’t get money from people who don’t have any, especially if they are illegals without Medicaid; hospitals know that.  They treat all of them anyway. But you can’t fault a hospital that maybe just saved your life or the life of a family member, delivered your baby, or treated a gunshot wound, or drug overdose, from trying to get paid for their services.  It’s not like the doctors and staff work for free. 

In any case, hospitals lose billions every year treating the poor and uninsured. 

Part of the reason health insurance is so expensive is that the insured help pay for this already through higher premiums. In one state it was estimated that the average insured family paid as much as $2,000 more annually to help cover the uninsured – and that was before ObamaCare.   

Still, I suppose it’s insulting to some that recipients of emergency services are asked to pay something. That’s the impression I got from my brief exchange on Facebook.   

I forget to mention someone else who claimed hospital emergency rooms discriminate against the poor and uninsured by pushing those people to the back of the line for treatment.

I don’t believe that’s true at all.  But you’ll never convince class warriors. I probably have a different perspective from seeing a lot of emergency rooms in action.  

I’ve taken a lot of people to emergency rooms, including my mother who was a hypochondriac of the first order. She was always sure she had something she read about in Reader’s Digest.  She managed to get her hands on a Physicians Desk Reference, too, so she could find and claim the proper contraindications for just about every drug she was ever prescribed.  Shortness of breath, palpitations, tingling in the extremities, nausea, whatever.

From the time she was in her 30s she always told us what she wanted on her tombstone was: “See, I told you I was sick.” She died at 90, appropriately enough on Groundhog Day. 

I got very familiar with going to emergency rooms whenever she had an “incident.”

My experience was that most emergency rooms were filled with other hypochondriacs, and people too lazy to wait to see a regular doctor for the flu, a nosebleed, a sprain or other less-than-life-threatening condition.  The docs in the emergency room focused first on people they needed to save – like those brought in from a serious car accident – not just serve. 

Which made sense. It’s called triage. Emergency rooms aren’t run like the deli counter where you get a number and everybody gets served in order.  Arterial spurting trumps a runny nose, as it should.  That’s why it’s an “emergency” room. 

But for far too many people the emergency room is their local family doctor. These people get in the way of those who truly need emergency medical care.  They use ambulances like taxi cabs and expect to be treated like royalty when they arrive.

They huff and they puff and can’t imagine anyone might have a greater need for immediate treatment.  These assholes go nuts when emergency room staff doesn’t push everyone else aside because they have the sniffles or their precious little snowflake has a sprained finger. Tell me you haven’t had the same experience in an emergency room – EMTs bring in somebody bloodied from head to toe who needs to be rushed into surgery, and one of these jerkoffs in the waiting room starts up about how long THEY’VE been waiting already.    

Hey, if you default to the emergency room instead of a regular doctor’s office for every little thing like a bad cold or an ingrown toenail, people who are really demonstrably hurt will take precedent over you every single time. It’s not about insurance or whether you have more or less money.

It’s about actual need for emergency services.  Emergency room docs and staff aren’t on commission; nor are the admitting nurses.  They are paid a salary to save lives, and fix things, in that order.  Emergency rooms, on average, routinely treat a lot of people who don’t need to be in their emergency room but are there because they don’t want to bother with a regular doctor or think they are too important to wait.  

Some of them have no insurance or money to pay emergency room services, too, but they always get treated anyway.  Go to any major city or suburban emergency room and you’ll see what I mean. In some cases, the emergency room saves their life or the life of a loved one.      

The hospitals don’t have any choice. They have to treat anyone who comes into their emergency room – citizens, illegals, foreigners here on vacation – whatever.  It’s the law.   

And they can’t turn anyone down for inability to pay, or lack of insurance. 

So the next time you hear some blowhard on TV or online how people die because they don’t have insurance, or that more people will die if ObamaCare is repealed, remember this:

That’s all bullshit.