Thread: Too broke for the ER, patients flee

Too broke for the ER, patients flee

Recession forces many to leave ‘against medical advice,’ doctors say

Jesse Ashlock of Brooklyn, N.Y., was knocked unconscious in a bicycle accident last July that also left him scraped and bruised.

In hindsight, maybe Jesse Ashlock shouldn’t have walked out of the New York emergency room last summer, only a couple hours after being knocked unconscious in a Brooklyn bicycle crash.

Medical crews told him he needed a blood test, chest X-rays and probably a CT scan to check for head injuries. And he certainly should have had treatment for major road rash, including raw scrapes on his face, neck and hands.

But the 31-year-old editor for a design magazine was between jobs, briefly without health insurance and afraid of being stuck with a sky-high hospital bill. The doctor on duty dismissed Ashlock’s questions about cost, telling him she was “a physician, not an accountant,â€

I refuse... absolutly refuse to go to the hospital or doctor just so I can have the added cost of Illegal Aliens tacked onto my bill.... It aint happening...

I will travel from this third world country (USA) and get treated in a 1st world country and get top of the line service and tests for a tenth of the cost in a developed country.

If you truly think they dont charge you for Illegal Aliens... you better do a reality check and open up your check book real wide when you do your next hospital visit

It will only get worse under the Obama health plan, I look for rationed
care mostly for seniors and guess what color the majority of seniors
are, the outlook for our country is bleak unless clear heads prevail and
at this point none are in sight.

Then there are the people with medical insurance that are being bilked by doctors and fancy HMOs who order extensive tests and "preventative" treatments just to make money for their businesses. When someone goes in with a curious complaint, they are immediately sent for catscans and zero comes back. Sally just got a huge amount of radiation for nothing. They refer you to this doctor and that doctor and his lab and spread the costs around so everybody gets a share. Those should be called scam health care plans.

[quote]Medical crews told him he needed a blood test, chest X-rays and probably a CT scan to check for head injuries. And he certainly should have had treatment for major road rash, including raw scrapes on his face, neck and hands.

But the 31-year-old editor for a design magazine was between jobs, briefly without health insurance and afraid of being stuck with a sky-high hospital bill. The doctor on duty dismissed Ashlock’s questions about cost, telling him she was “a physician, not an accountant,â€