Who pays for emergency room without insurance
Who pays for emergency room without insurance
According to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labour Act (EMTALA), anyone that require medical emergency treatment from any medical institution. What this means therefore is that anyone that presents himself to any emergency room in America cannot be turned away whether he has a means of paying for the services received or not. Mind you, there are very many such cases across emergency rooms in America. People who show up to medical emergency rooms in critical conditions and need to get urgent medical care but cannot afford it. The big question that most people as therefore is who actually pays for these bills? Who are some of the people that use emergency room services without insurance? Today, we will take a look at some of the people who actually access emergency room services even if they have no insurance.
Some people are not privileged enough to subscribe to medical insurance. People with no jobs, homeless people, the aged, orphaned and many other people cannot afford to subscribe to medical insurance but they too need medical care when need arises. The other common scenario is when someone is averagely earning but has no medical insurance cover and needs to get emergency aid. Truth be told, emergency room bills can be very high sometimes and without insurance it becomes close to impossible to settle them. People are left stranded when the mail comes in with their emergency bill reading close to $20,000. It really is a desperate situation not just for the patient but the emergency room as well because they too understand sometimes that paying some of those bills is almost impossible. Here are some of the people that use emergency rooms without insurance and a brief explanation of how their bills are compensated.
Those that pay in cash
There are people in America with good jobs and stable sources of incomes but have no medical insurances. When they visit an emergency room for any medical service, they are required to pay all the charges in cash. If they can afford to offset the bill all at once, then well and good, most emergency rooms accept cash payment. If they cannot afford to offset the outstanding amounts in one go, they can negotiate terms of payment with the emergency room and they can pay the outstanding debt in instalments until the debt is finally settled. Is it a wise decision not to have medical insurance though? Not at all! Insurance will cover a lot of things. There are lots of benefits and some of the bills will be negotiated by the insurance company themselves saving you from a lot of hassle and stress.
The underprivileged
The second group of people that pays emergency room costs without insurance are the underprivileged in the society. People with no jobs and those with jobs that pay poorly. People who cannot afford insurance also end up getting medical care when the need arises. As earlier mentioned, the Federal law states that every citizen has a right to receiving medical care when he/she is in need of it whether he/she can afford it or not. When the emergency room asses the conditions of such people and ascertains that they truly require urgent medical treatment, they duly oblige and save their lives. The emergency room will then give determine the total medical bill used on these people say per month and note it somewhere. Because the emergency rooms would go bankrupt and out of service if they offered their services to the underprivileged for free, they have their own ways of compensating for these medical bills incurred. This includes adding a small figure to every patient that can afford his/her bill to compensate for the debt. They alternatively seek to know whether the patient qualifies for Medicare or not. If he/she qualifies, then Medicare or Medicaid pays for the outstanding bill. Some write the off the bills as bad debts and they will therefore command a higher rate from government payers.
To say the least, emergency rooms don’t lose as much money offering emergency medical care to people that cannot afford it. They have their own ways of balancing the finances to compensate for the debts incurred.
Just to cap off what I had earlier on said, medical emergency is of great importance especially if you can afford it. If you have a job and can be able to cater for it, find a good insurance broker and subscribe already. The nightmares of high amounts of bills and bankruptcy will be a thing of the past. Secondly you are likely to get better care if the emergency room is certain that your medical insurance will take care of your costs. Unless you have all the money in the world to be paying medical bills in cash, there is need to get medical insurance today.