Louis Proyect <[email protected]> writes: > > What I keep thinking about is the impact of this "reform" on hospital > outpatient services. When my wife went down to Lenox Hill Hospital a > couple of times last year for some borderline emergency treatments, we > noticed that the waiting room was filled with people who did not fit > the Upper East Side demographics. We figured out that these were folks > who were covered by the hospital's promise--written explicitly in a > document on the wall--that nobody would be refused service. They were > covered by charitable provisions that I assume are available at most > hospitals. Now that everybody will be forced to have insurance, I > wonder how this will impact poor people who will be forced to consider > co-payment issues. For my wife, it was no big deal under our Columbia > plan. Fifteen dollars each time was no biggie. But what if your > co-payment is 100 dollars? Will you decide to live with that nagging > cough or the chest pain? My guess is that one of the driving forces > behind this "reform" is to sweep poor people under the rug.
A brilliant plan in it's simplicity. The poor, forced to seek rudimentary medical treatment at frenetic emergency rooms, will now be on the hook for co-pays that they didn't have before due to this "reform". The poor will be swept under the rug indeed, with the marginal poor paying for the brooms. And the rug. That plan they've got for Columbia staff, and the one that I've got with the Ironworkers Union will be taxed to the point that they'll have to raise the rates/deductibles/co-pays and reduce the treatments that they cover. This could turn out to be more profitable that the rapacious policy of starting wars to enrich your own mercenary companies. -- In Solidarity, Billy O'Connor _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
