Thread: Needing to vent

I need to vent about my job too.

Last month, I put in my two weeks notice at a company that does use e-verify on its own employees, but they get around the system by using lots of temp or contract labor. Right before I left, one of my assistants had to quit working because her visa expired. Behind my back, the director of HR approved a personal leave of absence for her even though it clearly states in the employee handbook that I have to ultimately approve the request. Consequently, the corporate benefits analyst kicked the request back to me and I called her to see if it mattered that my assistant could no longer work in the U.S.. Long story short, the powers that be were caught trying to bend the law for an employee and I screwed up their little plan. This went over like a fart in church and my last week at work was very awkward.

My superiors were knowingly breaking laws and getting around the law by using contract labor and I really don't think there's anything I can do about it. I was thinking about calling corporate HR and/or ICE, but I decided that probably wouldn't do any good and just paint a bullseye on my head in the process.

jimm wrote eloquently about what she has witnessed personally as a nurse and included a statement about what really is at the root of our health care problem:

"Americans, this EMTALA law has to stop. We CANNOT take care of the WORLD!!"


For those who do not know what EMTALA means, below is a description I wrote earlier as a result of trying to learn about it myself during the health care reform legislation debate. With jimm, I concluded that we will never save our health care system unless we dismantle this 1986 bill, which is steadily destroying it:


EMTALA, Unfunded Emergency Room Care, and Health Care Reform

The same year it passed the "Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), the U.S. Congress also passed the "Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act" (EMTALA), requiring hospitals and ambulance services in the United States that accept payments under the Medicare program to provide emergency medical care regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay. There is no reimbursement provision. It would seem that the results of this unfunded mandate by the federal government may have led directly to the situation which we are now told requires "immediate health care reform" by Congress.

I heard a Congressman on CNN this morning defending the Democrats' 'public health care option' on the basis that "when uninsured people go to the emergency room and don't pay their bills, that cost is passed up by the hospitals to the insurance companies, which adds it onto the cost of insured people's premiums. Covering all the uninsured would solve this."

Below is the introduction of an explanation of EMTALA at Wikipedia with a link to the entire article. From this explanation, it seems repealing the " Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act" (EMTALA) might do a great deal more toward solving our current "health care cost crisis" than passing yet another federal health care mandate.

"There is also debate about the extent to which EMTALA has led to cost-shifting and higher rates for insured or paying hospital patients, thereby contributing to the high overall rate of medical inflation in the U.S."

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_ ... _Labor_Act

"The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (42 U.S.C. § 1395dd, EMTALA) is a United States Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. It requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. As a result of the act, patients needing emergency treatment can be discharged only under their own informed consent or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment.

"EMTALA applies to "participating hospitals", i.e., those that accept payment from the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under the Medicare program. However, in practical terms, EMTALA applies to virtually all hospitals in the U.S., with the exception of the Shriners Hospitals for Children, Indian Health Service hospitals, and Veterans Affairs hospitals. The combined payments of Medicare and Medicaid, $602 billion in 2004,[1] or roughly 44% of all medical expenditures in the U.S., make not participating in EMTALA impractical for nearly all hospitals. EMTALA's provisions apply to all patients, and not just to Medicare patients.[2][3]

"The cost of emergency care required by EMTALA is not directly covered by the federal government. Because of this, the law has been criticized by some as an unfunded mandate.[4] Similarly, it has attracted controversy for its impacts on hospitals, and in particular, for its possible contributions to an emergency medical system that is "overburdened, underfunded and highly fragmented".[5] MORE THAN HALF OF ALL EMERGENCY ROOM CARE IN THE U.S. NOW GOES UNCOMPENSATED. Hospitals write off such care as charity or bad debt for tax purposes. Increasing financial pressures on hospitals in the period since EMTALA's passage have caused consolidations and closures, so the number of emergency rooms is decreasing despite increasing demand for emergency care.[6] There is also debate about the extent to which EMTALA has led to cost-shifting and higher rates for insured or paying hospital patients, thereby contributing to the high overall rate of medical inflation in the U.S."

See also:

PAYING THE PRICE FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CARE

Investor's Business Daily
August 24, 2009 Monday

Last decade, the Clinton administration added teeth to a little-known Health and Human Services Department regulation mandating that hospitals provide emergency treatment even to illegals.

Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, hospitals can't even ask for a patient's immigration status or ability to pay prior to delivering treatment. They also can't keep such uninsured patients waiting, even if their problem isn't an emergency. Nor can they discharge them until they're fully stabilized and have safe transportation.

More, hospitals must post EMTALA signs in Spanish and English. The law isn't limited to ERs. Hospitals must accept illegals at any facility on campus -- including outpatient clinics and doctor's offices -- located within 250 yards of the main buildings.

Hospitals end up treating uninsured illegals for the sniffles and other nonurgent care, and pass that exorbitant cost on to the insured, the Government Accountability Office has found. Resulting overcrowding leads to delays in "care for patients with true emergency needs."

This unfunded federal mandate has placed a heavy and unfair financial burden on more than 1,500 hospitals across the country, according to HHS data, costing billions in unpaid bills by some estimates.

(Read the entire article by clicking on the source link below)

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... c&t=173234

JJMM I feel your pain,

You should see what it is like in Los Angeles.

My wife had a planned c-section for the birth of our daughter in 2005, at a hospital here in Los Angeles. we were told to be there at 3:00 pm for the planned 6:00 pm birth. My wife and I waited in front of the opperating room entrance starting at 5 pm, nurses and parametics kept bringing in Hispanic woman in full labor.

We kept getting bumped and passed over and over and over, by these illegals. Finally around 11:00 pm my wife was in labor, and we were still getting passed over. At 11:45 pm after the doctor started screaming at the nurses, the doctor, myself and the patient advocate just wheeled my wife into the delivery room, as the doctor said they wouldn't kick us out once we were in. The delivery room was still uncleaned from the last delivery we stayed in the room while it was cleaned.

We Americans are the only ones paying, but endlessly getting passed over by the hispanic illegals taking advantage of the system.

Thank god my daughter was born safely, but it is a crime that the Hispanics are allowed to abuse the system and us Americans so blatently.

greginLA, so right, although up here it is not as bad.

but it is a crime that the Hispanics are allowed to abuse the system and us Americans so blatently.

Have you ever noticed how much they will howl and whine, and even get nasty when they stop getting their way, being able to do whatever they want?

Up here, our governor, under pressure from the voters, took away their privelage to get a license, they howled and complained about how they would not be able to work (as though they had any right to anyways, being here illegally). Now it is just a matter of time, when their licenses will expire, one by one, and they will get caught, unlicensed and have their vehicle towed, and not be able to make it to those jobs they took illegally.

If our government would just start taking away those hand-outs and ill gotten privelages, then it would not longer be a good thing to be here, they would all go home.

Take away the ability to abuse the 14th Amendment, and they would no longer want to have their kids here, not citizens, no longer able to collect welfare benefits for them, no more freebies, no more desire to have your kids here illegally.

We have to keep pushing for that one too, to correct the abuse of the 14th Amendment.

A friend in FL needed surgery, but as they were starting to put him under, all of a sudden they tossed him on a gurney and wheeled him out to the hallway. They wheeled in another man and my friend heard the nurse ask him if he needed a translator!
Good thing my friend has a sense of humor.

While working @ Los Angeles hospital tele floor as a license nurse I was ask why didn't I speak spainish from illegal immigrate family? I told them I can speak some German and Tagalog. They demanded for a spainish speaking nurse. I informed my Charge nurse the family demand. The Charge nurse explained to the family that their request was not possiable that all the nurses spoke Englsih or Tagalog.