GOP Lawmaker Says Emergency Rooms Should Be Able To Turn People Away

[SummerSnow]

Back to the good old days.

By Amanda Terkel

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.

*read the rest at link....https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/diane-black-emergency-rooms_us_59e674cce4b0d0e4fe6bd0ee?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. I cant say what I want to say.

Oh, what you wanna bet she is a xtian?

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. She is LYING about who she wants to say NO to.

[Takket]

3. Know what keeps people out of the ER?

Quality affordable healthcare that keeps medical issues in check before you end up needing an ER

[hlthe2b]

4. And, that resulted in turning away "unesirables/uninsured"--not merely the non-emergent.

This so-called nurse knows better.

[Marthe48]

5. Until it is your loved one

anyone who supports her, is supporting a death panel- judge, jury, and executioner

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

24. Exactly! The ONLY ones I WANT to see turned away from ER's are people

like this POS Congress-critter who espouse such sickening, extremist views!!

[Thomas Hurt]

6. Hell yeah, you don't have a bone sticking out of your broken leg sweetie, put some ice on it

and go to your doc in the morning.

Of course if they do this the hospital should not be shielded from legal action if the "its nothing" turns out to be something and you end up maimed or dead.

[CatMor]

16. Actually they tried to do that to my mother in a ER...

she fell and broke her wrist. Her hand was totally detached from her wrist and because it was a Saturday there weren't any orthopedic surgeons available. They wanted to send her home with some Tylenol until Monday. One of the nurses was so upset they changed their minds and we sat in a room in the basement for 5 hours waiting for the surgeon. He set the break with a pulley and a plaster cast. Unfortunately, she ended up being deformed and they wanted to do plastic surgery but she refused because she was 82 at the time.

[GoneOffShore]

7. That's one screwed up 'nurse'.

Though I've been seeing some anti-vaxx nurses show up on Facebook, who should know better.

[Yavin4]

8. What if you're shot by a gunmen in Vegas and had no health insurance?

Should the ER turn you away?

[Doreen]

36. Only if you are a woman, person of color, or not a bible thumping Christian.

[justgamma]

9. What she doesn't understand is

Doctors can refuse to see you if you don't have the cash.

[Cal Carpenter]

31. Hmmm, I'm pretty sure she understands that

She may not give a shit though.

[ck4829]

10. A crystal clear example of "exclusion"

http://tpalladium.freeforums.net/thread/19/intro-evidence

[asiliveandbreathe]

11. So, did this socalled er nurse take the hypocratic oath - well, I looked it up..

Just as doctors take a Hippocratic Oath, nurses take a pledge to do their best for their patients. Often called the Florence Nightengale Pledge, ...

guess she forgot..or went to a nursing school that doesn't require doing their best for patients...

[beaglelover]

12. ER's should be used for true emergencies. Currently they are not.

I just experienced this first hand. On Labor Day my husband awoke to tell me he did not feel well. An hour later he asks me to take him to the ER because he knows he has a kidney stone (he's had them before). We went to Cedars since it is in network. After waiting a couple of hours, we're finally taken into the ER area where they actually begin to treat you. While in the waiting room for those two hours there was one elderly couple there and the wife was there for a rash. A fucking rash. That is what urgent care or pharmacies are for, not ERs.

Then in the treatment area, in the 'room' across from ours is a mother and her tween daughter. Why are they there???? Because the daughter had thrown up her Grande Latte from Starbucks in the car. Poor little baby. The doctor takes the history and tells the mother what they'll do to treat her precious daughter, and the mother has the nerve to say...can you hurry it up a bit she has school tomorrow. I couldn't fucking believe it.

Along with us, there were a number of people there with true emergencies, including a very nasty knife cut and a broken arm which made me almost lose my lunch....good thing I was in the ER where they could treat me for my vomiting.

People need to learn about and use urgent care more. They are all over the city and all the times I've gone (two), they see you relatively quickly and treat you and write you a prescription. If I have a sinus infection, I would never think of going to an ER. I'll go to urgent care. If I break my arm, yes, I'll go to the ER. That's what it is for.

[WillowTree]

17. Which I think is what that nurse was trying to say.

How much does it run up the cost of medical care to treat things like rashes and other non-emergent conditions in an ER rather than an urgent care facility? Somewhere along the line, reason has to come into the picture.

[beaglelover]

19. Exactly!

[Aristus]

23. But if citizens are unable to afford health insurance to be able

to access primary or urgent care centers, they will go to the emergency rooms. This biddy is too stupid to see that the ACA will reduce the number of ED visits by making more appropriate options viable.

I used to see this all the time in my practice until the ACA (a Godsend) went into effect.

By weakening the ACA, the repukes are making worse a problem of their own making...

[procon]

26. "true emergencies"?

I spent over 30 years as an ER nurse, and I can't tell you how many times that someone was given a cursory exam for a presumably minor ailment, then treated and streeted, only to return via paramedic with a life threatening problem that was missed.

Here's the thing, patients might not have any choice in where they get treatment. If they have an HMO or PPO they stay within network. Their urgent care facility might be closed, too busy to see more patients, or lack the expertise or treatment protocols necessary. In that case they will direct patients to go to the ER where they have an existing contract to treat their patients.

You gripe about an elderly woman with a "fucking rash", but you don't even know enough the realize that rash might be symptomatic of a serious illness or a potential life threatening reaction to a foreign substance. You complain about a patient seeking treatment for vomiting, but then you're relieved that it's OK for you to get treated in the ER for the same thing. That's rich.

[Wellstone ruled]

33. Having expericened this with a Neighbor who was having a heart attack.

Treated and Streeted,the next day we were back to the same ER were he stayed for tens with open Heart Emergency Surgery and hassle with the Friggin finance office people.

[beaglelover]

34. You clearly didn't get the sarcasm in my vomiting comment. LOL.

I'm sure there are times that it is valid for a non life threatening ailment be treated in the ER. But it is widely known that the American public is misusing ERs and causing EVERYONE's heatlhcare costs to go up. You can't deny that.

And this old lady did not have a life threatening disease. She had a little rash on her wrist. BFD.

[Bleacher Creature]

28. If you give ERs the ability to turn people away, where do you draw the line?

And what's to stop them from doing so based on the ability to pay, but couched as something else? If she truly wanted to lower unnecessary ER visits, she should support universal health care.

[beaglelover]

35. What they should do is build urgent care facilities right next to ERs. If someone comes in with a

rash, for example, they'd be directed to the urgent care facility. If someone comes in with a heart attack, the ER will take care of them.

And if someone came in because there little sweetums had thrown up her Starbacks, they'd tell them to GTFO!

[Marthe48]

38. People have used ERs for care for years

There was a story 25-30 years ago that hospital ERs in big cities were overwhelmed with people who went there because they couldn't afford doctors, couldn't afford quick care clinics (our local ones make you pay up front), homeless, and so on. You might have heard the medical history on the rash and the sick teen, but I'd like to point out that they each might have underlying conditions that made an ER visit necessary.

Our local hospital is non-profit, and they are committed to treating people who come. hey do have signs about certain conditions they can't treat in ER and a phone number to call for more information.

We just need a better system.

[fleur-de-lisa]

13. "Let them die!"

Health care is for the rich, dontcha' know?

[Irish_Dem]

14. If everyone had health insurance, ER visits would drop drastically. nt

[kacekwl]

20. Isn't that where the repukes told us uninsured to go for our healthcare ?

That's where I'm off to for care when they take away my ACA coverage.

[Irish_Dem]

22. Yep. Told us that we have healthcare because we can go to ER. Now they want to take that away.

Figures.

[Johonny]

27. It's amazing how many Urgent centers opened after Obamacare

I don't have to go to the ER for most things anymore, because suddenly there's enough people in the insured pool to make urgent cares possible.

[Irish_Dem]

29. That is wonderful. Better care and savings for everyone.

Better care because the setting is appropriate for the presenting problems.

[ret5hd]

15. Sounds like a particular "health care professional" right here.

[Aristus]

18. There's no bottom to their stupidity.

What cretinous thug gave this hamhock a nursing license?

The Affordable Health Care Act gave economically-disadvantaged communities the ability to access primary care, thereby being able to avoid having to go to the emergency rooms for primary care issues.

When I started as the medical provider at our local homeless clinic, the care and medications were provided free through a grant; a combination of state and federal funds, and donations. This outlay paid huge dividends to the community and to the tax-payers by freeing up the emergency rooms for emergency care only. When the homeless accessed emergency room care that they couldn't pay for, the hospital wrote it off their taxes, passing the cost onto the tax-payers.

The ACA continued this benefit to the community and an even greater rate of savings to the tax-payers than ever. The Repubs are too fucking stupid to understand that the ACA saves money. They're too busy shrieking "SOCIALISM!!!", and trying to negate every good thing the black guy did...

[samnsara]

21. wait til these ppl lose ALL healthcare..see how many use ER then!!

...for colds, shots, sniffles etc...

[Docreed2003]

25. Shes a sick person...

Black loves to play the “I’m a nurse” and “I’m just like you” angle and it’s paid dividends for her career, I suppose. It’s ironic to hear her sound so folksy, considering she lives in a mansion on the lake behind her own private gate in a neighborhood not far from me.

As to her point, no ER’s shouldn’t be able to turn people away. While her suggestion may sound reasonable, and yes people overuse ER’s, what she is really suggesting is that ER’s should be able to have the ability to turn people away who have no insurance. If you want people to stop abusing the ER, provide better healthcare coverage for them, it’s really that simple.

[NCjack]

30. She's in the wrong profession -- should be chasing dead-beat dads and moms. nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

32. Before I had health insurance I went to Kaiser Permanente Hospital and they treated me like a king.

[Doreen]

37. I remember years ago I kept going to the ER because I kept getting sick and

they would send me to the doctor the next day the doctor took my pulse, temperature, checked my throat and gave me some stupid pill for what I do not know. I ended back up in the emergency room once again. finally a doctor that was on shift ordered some actual tests and found that I had a serious but very underline infection from my bladder. I would not had been to the emergency room so many times if in the beginning either they or my doctor had done what they should have in the first place. The wonders of being on government health care. I go to doctors and then the emergency room they tell me nothing is wrong send me away and finally at some point they find out I was really sick.

I went through a period when my abdomen was hurting a lot and to the point where it doubled me over. I kept going to the doctor and emergency room to no avail. One day my husband and friend were coming back from the beach and I got extremely ill. I was sweating, shaking, crying in pain, throwing up, and hurt all over. Once again I was taken to the emergency room and once again another doctor asked for tests including a pregnancy test which no one had ever done. I was pregnant and they scheduled an exploratory surgery for me the next day. I had a tubal pregnancy that was ready to burst at any moment. If the assholes before had taken me seriously and did the tests they should have done I would not have come that close to dying and I would not have to be in the emergency room so much.

I think that because of people who go in for stupid things ( like throwing up a Starbucks ) is one of the reasons they do not take even the seriously ill seriously.

What this stupid so called nurse needs to understand is that some of these people who she is complaining about have NO insurance and this is the ONLY way they can get health care. So little miss nurse, you do as much as you can to make it so everyone can afford health care and I will bet you will not have near as many people bothering you.