You Might Have to Live in Texas To Believe It

Emergent health care in Texas is not good. It has improved some over the years, but not much.  The quality of care provided in our emergencies rooms is adequate if not good or better, but access to care is the problem.

For years, if someone was unable to demonstrate proof of payment and they present in an emergency room needing care, they were often turned away. Or, they were shunted to a different emergency room. Well, there are laws against that, especially for emergent, life threatening situations. But even for questionable situations, people are still turned away.

The front line emergency room staff are trained to be sure that payment is available before they welcome patients wholeheartedly.  So, someone who needs hospitalization might be given xrays and prescriptions to take at home, instead of admission. 

This may sound barbaric.  In many respects it is.  But, it is true.  Part of the problem are the emergency room users themselves. Many do not have a primary care provider or urgent care clinic they prefer to use, so they use an emergency room for that type of care. Although education and fees have been used to stop this practice, it has not totally ended it.

Much of the problem is the broken health care system in the United States.  Insurance companies choose treatment for people, not the health care providers.  And there are so many hoops to jump through, no wonder the health care costs are so high. A perfect example is my recent use of insurance for physical therapy.  While my health care provider could acknowledge my physical therapy authorizations, they were not done or managed by my health care provider, but by some other contract source. And you know each contract source has its own set of bureaucracy to support and has to justify itself, but really did little if nothing to encourage or support my health care.

I understand private insurance and government programs for health care billing is a night mare.  I am sorry that is the case.  Instead of insuring people receive timely and efficient care, care is delayed, and billing is so obfuscated that you do not know if your bill is correct or not!

So, who's to blame?  I do not know?  How do we fix it? I do not know.  What I do know is that when insurance companies make health care plans and funding for emergency room treatment is more important than treatment, the American people lose.