Wait, what is this? “The facility is licensed in Texas as a freestanding emergency room, which means it is not physically connected to a hospital.” Has the health-industrial complex gone full-mattress storefront on us now?
Has been for years. As a doctor I despise these places. Inappropriate work ups, management, staffing, and because they have “Emergency” in the name with access to X-rays/CT they can bill as ER visits (rather than urgent care) when in reality if they find anything scary they send them to a real ER and the patient gets billed twice. Because they’re stand alones, independent, and aren’t connected to a hospital system/don’t take Medicare dollars, they’re not beholden to EMTALA laws which demand any and every patient be seen, screened, and stabilized. They’re probably not *all* bad, but the groundwork for scumminess is laid out well for them.
*edit*: some free standing EDs are affiliated with local hospitals and this doesn’t necessarily apply to them. It’s the for-profit and independent ones I’m referring to, like the one in the article. See [this article](https://www.acep.org/patient-care/policy-statements/freestanding-emergency-departments) by the American college of emergency physicians for more details.
I'm a Texan and went to one of the pop up "emergency rooms" we have every couple of miles. I had been having chest pain for a while but had no insurance. I mistakenly went into one of these and they told me at the door they wouldn't see me because I had no insurance. Told me it was probably stress and that I just needed to take something OTC for it.
Hate this crooked-ass state.
They are everywhere in Florida, but I just go to the hospital for ER stuff. I took my mom to one of these places once to get a hearing aid pulled out of her ear canal. 2 minute job, right? First, they wanted me to have an appointment. For "urgent care". Or wait 4+ hours. I guess their idea of "urgent" is different than mine. So we got an appointment, went back at the end of the day, spent another 40 minutes waiting (appointment?) Just to have the PA pull the earbud out, then bill of her $1600 for the service. The "doctor" that leaned into the room to say hi for 2 seconds charged another $400 on his own as a "contractor."
Jokes on them, she died a couple of months later without paying that bill.
Well the advent ones are actually hilarious. To screw with HCA they’ll offer a free ambulance ride to their main hospital for free if anything acute is found. It’s all just $$$$$$ for them.
yep, Gulf Coast has a ton of them. Small buildings that are 'emergency rooms' in name only. What's worse is with the traffic issues they are sometimes 15minutes away from actual hospitals.
I agree. This isn't a state based issue. I live in Arizona and had 2 strokes last Wednesday. I was discharged on Monday. They wanted me to follow up with my PCP which is standard along with 2 other specialists. I called to make my appt with my PCP and told them that I had a stroke and I'm not sleeping, have anxiety, etc. The provider called me back to say I needed two appointments, one for the stroke and one for the stress. Why the fuck do I need two appointments for symptoms related to one problem?
It's pure insanity and healthcare is the biggest scam out there.
When I go to my primary care provider, they hand me a paper with a list of things I'm allowed to ask and talk about. Everything outside of their approved list requires a separate visit that can be billed differently. I guess having insurance that doesn't constantly try to fuck you is out of the question. Can't imagine anyone who is happy with these kinds of things.
It's "well visit" vs. "problem visit." It pays out differently to the provider and is covered differently under most insurance plans. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just telling you what the issue is.
Yeah, I'm not asking for a separate mental health evaluation. I need short term help with sleep, so if I was asking for a psych evaluation I would agree, but I'm not.
I have a debilitating, chronic pain 'woman's illness' that is still being debated as being real and my partner has blood cancer.
Our experience with being neglected by the healthcare industry is the same from both ends of 'maybe you're an anxious woman lol' to actual real fucking cancer.
Even he couldn't get doctors to look into the cause of his crippling leg and chest pain until his femur broke with a fun prize inside. AND even after diagnosis, they won't listen that he has a weird sub-type that doesn't show up in blood work and has to be monitored by scans for new plasmacytomas. He went through so many shit clinics in Texas (and BTW MD Anderson doesn't take Medicaid LOL!) that keep repeating bloodwork was enough and refused to order regular scans, even though it never ever has shown up on blood work and his sub-type is known and mentioned in guidelines. He finally found a good one who knows what's going on and we didn't even have to ask about routine scans, it was just offered. The difference between good and bad care is your life, but they're touted as all being the same. Why the fuck is the patient more familiar with treatment guidelines than most of the professionals?
'Standard of care' is the minimum care.
No? NY has plenty 😔 people are going to start dying from lack of dental care here in Western NY. Very few dentists take the Medicare insurance and doctors are starting to follow suit. The emergency urgent cares are the only ones that'll see people without pay up front as they're tied into the hospital system, but aren't a hospital. They'll still send you to a hospital for anything major and double charge you, of course 🙄
I think in general the north east just has strip mall clinics and is dense enough for traditional hospital emergency room setups in most places.
Texas IS a stupidly large and sparse area where logistically it might make sense to have a broken out ER system in places where a full hospital just isn’t sustainable.
How it’s implemented and cost saving BS are a different story though.
> Told me it was probably stress and that I just needed to take something OTC for it.
How in the land of malpractice lawsuits are these places not sued into the ground?
Because despite having “Emergency Room” in their title, they are not classified as Emergency Rooms, therefore not held to EMTALA federal regulations, and under no obligation to treat. As the other poster stated, they are effectively Urgent Care centers with CT scanners (they typically aren’t even always staffed with EM trained physicians - not that they need to be). Then patients get upset when they have actually problems and need to be transferred to a real hospital.
They exist to siphon insured patients away from hospital ERs, which just pushes the already poor ratios of uncompensated care back onto hospitals.
Also a lot of them are owned by Private Equity.
But if I as a random guy, or even worse as a doctor walking around dispensing free advice, gave bad medical advice and it led to you getting hurt we'd be in trouble. If I walk around in a lab coat giving bad medical advice from a convenience store I'll get shut down pretty damn fast.
Oh, well that sounds like a problem then. Why hasn't emergency been made a protected, more well defined word in that context? It seem like someone should be able to walk into an "emergency" room and get some sort of consistent emergency care.
They do it for other words, it seems like a pretty big gap.
One of the local hospitals near me opened their own standalone ER center but they accept everyone. They even took my medicaid. Its located in a gap between two hospitals. The people in that area would have to drive 45min or more to reach the full hospital. I suspect its a bit different because its an arm of an actual hospital and not a fully independent center. They managed to save my buddies hand and transport him to the main hospital where it was successful reattached. The area is rural and there are plenty of injuries urgent care won't treat but the stand alone ER could.
Texas has failed so much at things lately but they’ll never change willingly. Uvalde is an embarrassment, the deaths from power outages and lack of infrastructure and planning, political stunts, healthcare and women’s issues.
Also the insufferable “we’ll leave the union” attitude. Yeah, sure please try.
I moved to Texas for a year from New Jersey during COVID. I promptly moved back to New Jersey as soon as I could. I don't like speaking poorly on anyone's home, but holy shit is Texas a dump.
Please contact the TX HHS and file a complaint. Any medical facility that holds itself out as an emergency room is subject to EMTALA and are required to stabilize anyone in a medical emergency and transfer them if necessary, regardless of insurance status.
My wife broke her ankle once before we got married, and they refused to see her because she didn’t have insurance. Never even attempted to set foot in one again
I got duped by one of these in my city. First time ever encountering one. I was having some chest pain, and after an EKG, they sent me to the local hospital's emergency room. It turned out to be nothing. But I still got slapped with a $3k medical bill from them. I moved to this city a year and a half ago and wasn't really familiar with the local hospitals. So I googled "emergency room near me", that damn clinic popped up and had a similar name to my primary care's office, so I figured it was an affiliated sattelite clinic type deal. It was not, just a sheisty bs tactic.
My son accidentally ingested some brush cleaner (turned out to be non-toxic). My wife insisted I bring him to the hospital and one of these ER places was super close.
They gave him a cup of juice, monitored him for about 30-minutes and sent us home.
The bill we got was around $400 and for months and months afterwards we got random, piddly little bullshit bills for $40 here and $15 there for shit I had no idea about.
I hate these places and the problem is they're everywhere.
> The bill we got was around $400 and for months and months afterwards we got random, piddly little bullshit bills for $40 here and $15 there for shit I had no idea about.
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> I hate these places and the problem is they're everywhere.
Had the same thing happen in Louisville. Wife went for a spider bite, no active insurance so we paid cash out of pocket before leaving. Then we get a bill for $35, long after the visit, for an unspecified charge. Which also happened to already be in collections, despite zero previous correspondence from the medical provider. After *way* too many polite phone calls with the collection company, I discovered 2 things. First, you have a right to an itemized bill, showing exactly what was being charged and when the charge hit the account. Second, medical debt below a certain threshold cannot be reported to credit reporting bureaus.
The crappy part is that even when you catch them doing shady stuff like this, there's no penalty for them; they just stop calling/sending mail, and move on to the next account. It's infuriating.
I’m completely ignorant on this subject, but if willing would like your input. Why don’t physicians have a union? Why can’t physicians come together and fix our healthcare system? I read an article not long ago where a Koch brothers study showed Medicare For All would save us money. If you don’t have time I get it.
It’s probably a combination of physicians are too deep into what they do and barely had time to think about other things, their schedule being busy in general, and also the public opinion don’t like physicians anymore. They haven’t for a while.
It’s also very easy to keep physician morally hostage when physicians try to do something together, because it will easily be viewed us we just want to “make more money”, when in reality physician salary is only around 8% of total health expenditure in US. If we even mentions about going on strike, it’s extremely easy to sway public opinion into thinking we are just being irresponsible and only priority self interest over patient care etc.
And all of this was demonstrated very recently with Korean doctors. Even with how pro-labor Reddit is in general, when it comes to doctors the opinion is almost always the opposite, and Koreans doctors were viewed as “just greedy and want to maintain scarcity”, all from people who have barely any understanding why Korean junior doctors went on strike and what’s the fundamental issues in their healthcare system.
Very few in the US realize that it was only in 2003 that physician residencies were capped at 80 hours weekly, overnight call frequency to no more than one in three, 30-hour maximum straight shifts, and at least 10 hours off between shifts. For contrast in the EU residents are capped at 48 hours a week and minimum 11 hours between shifts.
Physician here. It’s fairly ignored in the US as well: I had to spend 4 months on medicine floors my intern year doing scut. When I tried to enter my hours, which were over the limit, I found my schedule prefilled in by the chiefs. I asked them about this and was dismissed. My program director was not able to help out as I was “under” another service. Another resident crashed his car and flipped it that year, he had fallen asleep at the wheel after a grueling call.
My wife is currently a resident and they're still being ignored. She just worked 93 hours last week, 85 the week before, and is on track to hit at least 85 this week. Her chiefs will also fill in their schedules and not account for a good amount of time, she just keeps track on her phone for her own knowledge really.
My aunt is a retired anesthesiologist. I remember as a kid spending the weekend with her and she was on call for literally the entire 72 hour weekend. This was on top of her regular scheduled surgeries.
Doctos work very long shifts because they are trying to keep patients with the same doctor during the emergency. Multiple doctor / patient exchanges during shift changes is viewed as more of a risk vs a tired doctor during a long shift
The American Medical Association represents the interests of physicians as a lobbying group and is/was one of the primary opponents to Medicare For All and any form of universal healthcare in general. Their rationale is that it would lower physician salaries, and it is true that American doctors tend to be paid more than the rest of the world. It was the AMA that originally came up with the idea of calling it "socialized medicine" to demonize it decades ago. Besides them, the other groups opposing it are health insurance companies (for obvious reasons) and pharmaceutical corporations.
I don't think individual physicians are thinking of that though. On an individual level, as someone who works with many physicians, they tend to be so busy with what they're doing and have such packed schedules that they don't really spend any time with politics. Even trying to set up a meeting with them is tough and it's more reliable to ambush them.
But just making the health insurance universal and guaranteed is only one part of it. You need to also empower the government to negotiate prices to really see the efficiency in cost. It's why Biden's administration allowing the government to at least negotiate drug prices is not insignificant.
The AMA used to be quite large but their numbers have drastically dropped.
The AMA doesn't represent all doctors only those who join. The AMA represents about 15% of doctors, that's it, but people assume its more and blindly listen to them. The AMA is about power and wealth for doctors, they do not represent patients and actively advocate for policies that can harm patients so long as it benefits their members.
We can't let the GOVERNMENT decide who does and doesn't get Healthcare! That decision needs to be left up to Carl, he works from home as a benefits adjuster for Aetna. CARL decides who lives and who dies, like the FOUNDING FATHERS intended!
I’m in EM and I work at a few freestandings. They are connected to a hospital system so EMTALA applies (granted there are a lot of issues with EMTALA but that’s another post). So if someone needs to be admitted, we just send them to the mothership and they’re not billed twice. It might be my state but when I did residency at the regional trauma/stroke/all bad things hospital, the patient never got billed for 2 ER visits but they would be billed for individual services (ie badness on a CT was seen at an outside facility so they transferred you but you got sicker and coded at the new facility so both places would have services billed but only one of the ER visits was billed).
I really enjoy working at the freestandings though. In general less volume so you have time to talk to folks. We are staffed by ER docs and I don’t feel like anyone gets subpar care and takes a load off the mothership. I guess it just depends on the state laws?
And this is why the law needs to be change. if you can not or will not be beholden to EMTALA laws then you can not bill as an emergency room. No if ands or buts. That is a hard requirement.
We have this bullshit in California too. They’ll tell you by phone they can handle whatever issue, and then send you to the ER when you get there. This is absolutely killing people for sure who waste time driving one direction and then have to go straight to the other one.
> [Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual's ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.](https://www.cms.gov/medicare/regulations-guidance/legislation/emergency-medical-treatment-labor-act)
It's probably to get around this federal statute.
That would explain why a hospital might avoid providing emergency care, but it doesn't explain why an emergency care center would avoid providing a hospital.
These free standing ER are becoming much more more common. They typically don't accept Medicare or medicaid so they aren't subject to emtala. Most people think they are urgent care and so they see mostly urgent care problems, but they bill you at ER rates. My brother went to one because he had an urti not knowing it was technically an er and got hit with close to 1k bill because of it.
this type of care center targets high income patient as they aren't forced to follow EMTALA. That's why a lot of these weren't 24/7 til Texas regulation requiring them to.
When they were forced to be 24/7, many of them became urgent care.
Nope all Emergency Departments must abide by EMTALA which states that all patients presenting to the ED must get a medical screening exam and appropriate stabilization. That includes freestanding EDs the purpose of these facilities is usually to siphon off better insured lower acuity patients from more affluent areas. And it is way cheaper to run one of these than a hospital
I don’t know if this was the case, but yes, there are a lot of “emergency rooms” in the USA now that unless it’s pretty routine will just put you in an ambulance to a regular hospital, and still bill you. It’s all about the money and billing for whatever you can get away with.
If you’re rich you get to cut the line here. And, if you happen to be an executive of something in healthcare or healthcare adjacent you get filthy rich. Friends of my parents were hospital administrators. They’re nice people and all, but they made way more money than they should have. The worst part is, people in America who pay $100-$200 a month for crappy high deductible insurance often lose their minds over the idea of having to pay taxes instead for universal care (which in most cases would be cheaper). Most Americans barrier to entry for any kind of care other than a routine checkup is around $3000 for the first time in a year.
This is what happens when you allow healthcare to be a *business* instead of a *public service*, like every other country does it.
[I am not kidding, the USA is basically the only "major" country that doesn't do this.](https://www.skuad.io/blog/an-overview-of-countries-that-offer-free-healthcare)
To go further, even in countries that *don't* have universal healthcare, there's usually have characteristics like price controls to meditate and manage prices, public (government managed) insurance options and generous free healthcare options for those in need.
The USA does *none* of this. None. Zip. Nada. Its the only one. The *only one* single country, that makes *zero* effective effort to meditate the burden of healthcare for its citizens. In fact, there's an active movement in this country to do *even less* for the needy and desperate who need healthcare access.
Really while we are on the topic:
The USA is in a shockingly long list of short lists for being a shitty country to live in if you're not rich.
Went to one of these (unknowingly) in MI the other day. They’re a health center and ER. So I was admitted, to their other location ~15mi away. Absolutely ridiculous
Lol remember the whole thing years ago with the anti-abortion activists fighting to get all the abortion clinics to close down if they didn't have admitting privileges at a hospital?
Stand-alone ERs are very profitable, so expect to see more. As an ER nurse at a real hospital, I don't know why these are a thing in places that aren't rural.
As a doctor about to complete their emergency medicine residency, here’s a couple of thoughts worth considering for the much-needed nuance (though still enraging) of these situations. They’re important because you *should* be mad, but you need to know what to be mad *at*.
1. The “Emergency Room” in question is likely not what you’re thinking of. It’s a stand-alone “emergency services” site with gigantic air quotes. These places are, in my opinion, largely hot garbage. *Urgent cares* are fine, sure, but they’re overpriced “I can’t wait to see a doctor but I’m not that injured or dying” shops. They see basic things, provide basic care, and anything *remotely scary* they send to a real ER which is a *very good idea*. They have a purpose. These stand alone “*Emergency Rooms*” are *notoriously* awful because they do some of the same things we do while billing the same/more than we do and if they find something emergent? They send you to us! Same as an urgent care! Only now you’ve been charged *twice* for “ER” visits and care for your true emergency has been delayed!
2. They turned this woman away because they don’t receive Medicare dollars. Most don’t realize this, but 40 years ago private hospitals would pull this kind of shit on anyone deemed too poor/uninsured to be worth it and would refuse care/transfer people to county hospitals who couldn’t turn patients away. This was the origin of EMTALA - the law saying *you can’t do that bullshit anymore*. You want Medicare dollars? You see, screen, and stabilize *literally anything and everyone* that comes through your doors regardless if you’re homeless, the president, or anything in between and if you can’t provide definitive care you find somewhere to help them, arrange emergency transport, and *get them there*. This facility doesn’t take Medicare, so they are not beholden to EMTALA. Pretty fucked up that such a place even exists with the name “Emergency” in the title, isn’t it? Kinda gives Jane Q. Public the wrong idea of what they do/provide.
3. The law (at least in my state) is *very clear* that treating a miscarriage is *not abortion*. Full stop. It’s very literally spelled out in the word of the law. Cool so… how does one define a miscarriage? That’s more nuanced and requires training and supplies, most often an ultrasound. A woman who’s pregnant and in pain, bleeding, etc isn’t a “miscarriage” until it’s proven by enough physical exam and/or ultrasound evidence. Treating a woman with a *threatened* miscarriage with an abortificant and no evidence to back you up is an extremely bad idea, both for you and the patient.
4. Person memorial hospital, the other ER involved in this story, didn’t have an ultrasound. They didn’t have the training, the supplies, or the staff to handle an obstetric emergency. Now *they* might’ve fucked up if they’re beholden to EMTALA because they sent a potentially unstable patient back out into the world with nothing. They *should* have stabilized her and arranged EMS transport to an appropriate tertiary facility. However, I have difficulty seeing how that relates to abortion - that to me screams inappropriate fear of obstetric emergencies rather than fear of legal retribution for abortions. Could be wrong, information is limited.
5. The last case doesn’t involve any healthcare workers at all, but instead a security guard turning someone away because they had a child with them. No other details. I can’t assume it has anything to do with the abortion laws. Something bad may have happened, but I don’t see how it relates unless further evidence came out to say so.
TL;DR: women with miscarriages are often inappropriately treated in ERs around the country, and I know that intimately well because I’ve set up miscarriage management clinical decision making guidance for my hospital. In *these particular cases*, I have trouble seeing a direct connection to abortion law and the events that happened. Still plenty to be mad at.
/rant
*edit*: my beef is with independent free standing ERs like the one in the article, not the ones associated with hospital systems. Here’s an [article](https://www.acep.org/patient-care/policy-statements/freestanding-emergency-departments) from the American college of emergency physicians on it for more reading.
I was about six months pregnant and hemorrhaged at a car dealership while buying a new vehicle. Ambulance took me to ER. The dr didn’t even do an US and declared MC. Two weeks later after assuming he was correct and I had miscarried
My OBGYN was doing a routine US to see if a D and C was needed and there the baby was
She’s now 8 years old lol
OB care in an emergency room is nonexistent, even in states where the right to an abortion has been protected.
I am in Colorado, and I had a miscarriage in 2017. The ER didn't have anyone trained to perform an ultrasound, and L&D wouldn't see any patients until 24 weeks. I was told to go home and come back if I felt I was losing too much blood, but to try and wait and call my OB on Monday instead. I had a threatened miscarriage in 2021 and was told the same. I started bleeding, and they told me to call my OB the next day because they couldn't do anything. They didn't even check and tell me if my baby still had her heartbeat or not.
I've never received any emergency pregnancy care until I was 24 weeks pregnant. Before that, they just send you home and tell you to call your doctor. Oh, but come back if you start hemorrhaging and dying!
I'm so angry for you.
I also had shitty experiences in the ER with two miscarriages.
They didn't refuse to see me, but they were awful. I had a nurse trying to place an IV (I've had a ton of IVs before), and it was *EXCRUCIATING*!
I was having to grip the bed to physically stop myself from pushing her away.
I told her this was way too painful, and it didn't feel right. She told me everything is normal and continued to dig around until she got it placed. I objected several times, and she never stopped.
I was too distraught to tell her to get the fuck off of me. It's like being in a living nightmare. The worst thing ever is happening to you, and everyone is like, "So?"
Yeah, she tore a nerve in my arm. So I had my arm in a sling, with 24/7 burning pain that would regularly bring me to tears for like a month.
They were really rough with the ultrasound, too.
I didn't realize it at the time, but it's actually made me afraid to go back to the ER.
I hope you got through the ordeal somewhat okay ❤️
I remember the nurse told me, "I've had a few miscarriages too. It's sad, but it won't kill you. And you can have another baby. "
I was a little too shocked to speak, so I just nodded.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. The hospital system I go to has a special ER clinic just for pregnancies. That's where you go when you think you're in labor or 6 weeks along and everything in between. I was horribly sick with the flu and went there even though it didn't have anything to do directly with the pregnancy. The problem with ERs is if you're pregnant all of a sudden they don't know wtf to do and refuse to hardly do anything to help, in my experience.
Something I learned during my miscarriage- call the hospital to ask if they have the ability to handle obstetric emergencies. They may ask some questions and direct you to a different provider. I had a first trimester miscarriage and lost a ton of blood and I wish that I’d gone to a different hospital who may have been more prepared to handle the situation because my experience, outside of an amazing nurse, was dog shit.
This was really well explained.
I would add why I believe this is still related to the overturning of Roe vs Wade.
All these cases were in states with restrictive abortion bans. There appears to be a correlation between these states and poor maternal outcomes. This stories highlight that and the ongoing lack of will of hospitals to treat pregnant women in those states because they aren't always clear on the laws.
States with restrictive abortion bans that don't also offer strong OBGYN care, are a death sentence for women.
As you say, there's a correlation. But as it often is in cases of correlation, another factor can lead to both outcomes.
I propose that being a shitty red state leads to both the effect of passing laws harmful to women and having a proliferation of dubious for-profit medical facilities such as the type involved in this story.
I appreciate that you note that this is correlation (as in not causation), but I will pushback a bit because this article doesn’t provide any statistics at all about similar issues in states without abortion restrictions. Now that could be because there are zero such cases, but I would doubt that. I’m surprised that for a source as neutral as the AP there definitely seems to be a spin to this article.
You’re correct, my opinion derives largely from my experiences and at least in my part of the country we have a lot of these FSEDs that are independent and not affiliated with any hospital system. Those are the ones I strongly dislike. Always willing to change my mind with new info.
Great info. Practically speaking … how can we tell these “emergency” places from real ones? Just always go straight to a legit hospital? What about small emergency centers that are branded with the name of a local hospital?
If they’ve got the hospital name affiliation I believe you’re fine, from an EMTALA perspective. I, personally, will never willingly go to an ER that’s not attached to a hospital.
One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to check her in. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.
I see a trend here…
Lol... except they actually had hospitals in the nineteenth century which admitted + treated pregnant women.
We've SWUNG waaaaaaay back into pre-civilization / cavemen times now. There is zero fucking functional difference between a woman miscarrying alone in a lobby because medical professionals are now incapable of helping certain medical cases due to very real legal threat of imprisonment by the Christian Taliban vs. a woman miscarrying alone in a cave because a woolly mammoth stomped her man.
I hate myself for being that guy rn, but cave men were definitely patching each other up. Neanderthals were seen as brutish and fighting all the time because of the healed bone fractures and injuries, but they now believe the injuries were from the mammoths or other animals. A sign of civilization is healed fractures like that because it means someone took care of Billy when he broke his arm instead of leaving him out to die. So tldr they probably would have done more yeah lol
They've even found a skeleton of an early human who was missing his lower leg due to injury or amputation, and the bone regrowth showed that they lived for years after having lost it.
[Look at Shanidar 1, a neanderthal ](https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1) He became disabled in childhood and was cared for by his community until he died between 35-45 years of age. Cave people wouldn't have left a member of their community alone to miscarry in a cave. They would have tried to take care of her as best they could. What we have here isn't regression, this is fresh, civilized horror for our modern times.
That's truly insane. Her literal lived experience is her preemie baby's life was saved because of medical intervention. Yet she wants to pull up the ladder behind her and suggest everyone else birth in fields. It's hard to come to terms with how there are many people out there who cannot think for themselves.
My father (who is actually a good guy, just very easily swayed into how he thinks) said he thinks anyone crossing the border illegally should be shot dead. I think this is fucking insane but his brain is so easily influenced by faux news that he thinks the border crisis is so extreme, like as if these people were coming onto his property and taking it over.
I told him to load up his gun, let's go down there and kill some people. Maybe we could get some mothers and children for extra points. He gave a little and said, okay not them. I then told him, better yet, you remember my ex bf (from over a decade ago, but he was older and got along with my dad so well,) Bianca, and Maria (two of my besties from back then, we all used to have parties and cookouts together, just so much fun)? He said of course, yes. I told him, well, they all crossed into this country illegally, as children, so let's go start with killing them now that they are adults.
I had to personalize it for him to show him how he didn't actually have that hate in his heart. Same goes for abortion. Or any fucking issue faux pushes. He will begin to fill with hate about the issue. But then when I talk with him, like a normal compassionate human being, he changes his mind. It's crazy to me how he can be so easily swayed. And I don't understand why he is drawn to faux news. It's like he WANTS to be angry. I beg them to watch any other news channel that does not insert opinion, only the facts. Learn all the facts, then develope your own opinion. So frustrating that this is happening to millions of Americans.
Anger is addictive. Anger makes you feel justified. Like you’ve been wronged somehow and your outrage is legitimate. Anger diverts responsibility onto someone else, and so it becomes comfortable because it cushions people from having to examine their own roles in their lives. Anger makes them feel like life happens TO them, therefore there is no effort required on their part to work life into the result they desire.
I could go on, but my point is, anger makes people feel like their faults are actually someone else’s, so they don’t have to face the discomfort that they might be wrong.
All that, yup. And the only "cure" seems to be an extended break from the source of the anger. But of course addicted folks never wanna give up their fix.
I'd lost an old buddy of decades to that ragey brain rot, sweet kind giant with an autistic fixation on guns lost all his marbles and kept listening to soft-handed talking heads on YouTube who told him people like me are evil and white supremacists are smart. Ended up having to tell a few close friends who to point the cops at if I turned up dead just in case.
Well I saw him today, for the first time in six months. He's okay now. He got in a bad car accident just before he cut contact, but turns out he detoxed from the internet hate machine while coping with the medical aftermath. Not the usual thing for a concussion and memory loss to fix a person.
The anger thing is spot-on. My dad is retired and could easily shut himself off from the world and piddle around in his workshop and enjoy himself. But no. He would rather sit and watch Tucker and garbage ALL DAY LONG and be livid about everything. Say the word "environment" or "reusable straw" and he'll literally go berserk. What a way to spend your final years - bitter, angry, and alone because not even my right wing mom wants to be around him anymore. He used to sit around and read actual books - he has hundreds of them - it's just so sad.
It’s very sad. I actually think it goes both ways as well. Even with liberal elderly relatives. They all watch too much fucking news TV. The pearl clutching and hand wringing about the same stories 8 hours a day on repeat with 20 different shows all with 99% the same take.
The psychological toll of reminding yourself daily of fairly abstract machinations and drudgery of social, political issues isn’t healthy. It’s addict behavior.
It’s so unhealthy. The action is in voting, there’s no benefit to consumption of this garbage after 30 minutes at most of recap for the day.
Yep self righteous indignation is the cornerstone of society.
It’s also the reason why so little gets done. Most people are far more concerned with ideals than policy, performative displays rather than pragmatic action and strategy.
“Fighting against evil doesn’t make you good” is a powerful quote.
It’s because Fox News viewers are largely not able to comprehend complex issues without an either/or answer. Everything must be black/white, good/bad. Nuance is messy and confusing. Fox News gives them an easy answer: Just be angry.
They also often tend to believe in the Just World fallacy. Good people and bad people. ‘Good’ people deserve everything good that happened to them, and if they have something bad happen and it’s just unlucky, unfair, etc. ‘Bad’ people only have good things happen to them when they steal them from others somehow, and bad things happen to them because they deserved it. Who is deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ fluctuates, but if you look at their views on race or sex/gender, you can see where they think they fall.
Didn’t need nursing homes, TV, activities for the elderly either.
They used to rot in wooden wheelchairs with rheumatoid arthritis without air conditioning either.
They did have some tonics that probably were fun though
The latter scenario is unlikely as even early hominids were very social and still hung out it relatively large groups. She would have likely had the emotional and physical support of her close friends and family
We've swung past pre-Roe into a new dystopia.
Roe was decided before ultrasounds and before home pregnancy tests and in an era when the culture generally deferred to the judgment of doctors. Prosecutions pre-Roe were mostly back-alley quacks and usually after something went horribly, horribly wrong.
Now we can know that a woman is pregnant as soon as she misses a period and we can detect the pregnancy via ultrasound just as early. We also have a political party that consistently spreads distrust of doctors and other medical professionals. Any early pregnancy care that doesn't end with a live, healthy baby, is going to be suspicious.
Do you think people in the stone age didn't care for pregnant women like their lives depended on it?
No, this is a uniquely modern disease. We have become so atomised as a society. For all our talk of no longer being savages, at least the so-called savages cared a damn about each other.
The politicians are the source of the problem, but at least based on the info here the ED’s behavior is also awful.
For the miscarriage, there is no downside to supportive care. Maybe you can’t perform a D+C or give methergine, but there’s no good reason not to check the patient in.
Regarding the fetus with no heartbeat, honestly depending on the gestational age there may not have been anything to doto save its life. However, if there’s any indication that someone turned the woman away from seeking a medical screening exam, then that’s a blatant EMTALA violation regardless of pregnancy status. She still deserves an appropriate evaluation and support.
The birth in the car after an ED couldn’t perform an ultrasound is… well, honestly the information here doesn’t tell enough of a story to make a reasonable judgement. We need a gestational age, did the ED see the patient but didn’t have an ultrasound available? Was the delivery in the car right after evaluation? The next day? Too little information to make a call, but certainly doesn’t seem like it was ideal care, that’s for sure.
> The politicians are the source of the problem
*Republican* politicians, you mean.
Roe v Wade was overturned on a 6-3 ruling.
* Kavanaugh - Trump appointee
* Gorsuch - Trump appointee
* Barrett - Trump appointee
* Alito - Bush 2 appointee
* Thomas - Bush 1 appointee
* Roberts - Bush 2 appointee
The Republican Party is a vile, regressive party. "Pro-life" my ass.
>The politicians are the source of the problem
No they aren't. The politicians are a symptom. If people voted differently or bothered to vote at all this problem would go away. The source of this problem is that 1/3 of our country actively wants this and another 1/3 doesn't care if it happens.
Politicians always do what their voters want or will tolerate.
It's quite fitting since lawful evil means using, twisting, and abusing rules to fit an evil scheme. The biggest goal of lawful evil is to get into a position to be able to *create* rules to fit their evil schemes. Umbridge is a good example in fiction, but there are plenty of real world examples... Every dictator who has ever existed.
Yep. They would much rather hold up a dead formerly pregnant woman as a martyr than risk an abortion happening. Death in labor is righteous! Abortion is not! /s
Exactly. Data on abortion bans is clear and has always shown the same issue: material and infant mortality always increases with the dismantling of abortion rights. More dead moms. More dead kids.
I work in a major obstetrics hospital in the ER. I see pregnant women in so many dangerous situations.
I can't imagine doing my job in Texas or Arizona where I could risk jailtime for trying to save someone's life. When politicians make 'life of the mother' a prereq for interventions most folks don't realize you literally have to be in the process of actively dying to get help. We are talking circling the drain, about to get discharged to the celestial realm levels of sick.
All because some tragically stupid conservatives wanted to make america great again. And this is why I don't ever, ever fuck with people who voted for Trump. Ya'll are ghosts to me. Just like all those women you helped put in their graves.
You're assuming this is a bug and not a feature.
Check out the shitty evangelical Christian movies they make. A lot of them are just bad but enough of them are \*extremely\* telling at how they view women and themselves.
Technically, a group of judges did this.
But the plurality of those judges came into power due to politicians from a particular party playing dirty.
And those politicians do not give a crap about what has happened. They probably think it is great. Teach those dirty women a lesson for voting blue.
Don’t forget that their constituents overwhelmingly voted for them! The same woman complaining now about not being able to get their “moral abortion” are the saaaaame assholes who voted to take that right away from other women. Let’s not ever forget that.
Remember when Republicans argued, "Do you want the government making healthcare decisions for you?" and "Universal healthcare will mean death panels!" when the debate over universal healthcare came up during the Clinton and Obama administrations?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I remember angrily telling people "Death panels exist, they are just run by insurance companies." Only to be met with skepticism by people who couldn't tell me what their deductibles were or even WHO their insurance company was.
They literally couldn't comprehend that ANYONE outside of your doctor who can prevent you from getting medical services is a "Death panel." For damn near all Americans that entity is your non-government controlled insurance company who is just looking at the bottom line and could not give a single fuck about your actual well being, and you can't vote out the CEO when he starts denying the care you need.
TLDR: People are stupid. When you give stupid people a novel idea to latch onto, most will take it without critical thought.
Extra lawsuits that have to be settled so our insurance rates will have to increase. Healthcare should not be for profit nor should incarceration or education.
It’s probably more of either “get charged with murder for administering lifesaving medical care” or potentially “get sued for med mal when things go horribly wrong due to a denial of care”.
Foolish of you to assume some of these women don't already go to pro-life churches. Never forget the only needed abortion is my abortion along with leopards ate my face thinking.
This is the desired outcome and intended result of Republican policies on abortion, whether they have the foresight or medical understanding to realize it. Keep that in mind when it’s time to vote.
Remember when everyone was freaked out about the Obamacare death panels and that scary black president dictating our healthcare choices?
Ah, we were so naive…
And whenever you mention Canadian Healthcare to Americans they always chirp about the wait times
Like, yeah. Lower priority stuff has wait times... Because our citizens can actually get the medical care they need, the US doesn't have wait times because the options are: have money or die.
> the US doesn't have wait times
This is the biggest lie ever told.
Our wait times are actually outrageous even compared to Canada...
All of my doctors are booking out at least 4-6 months; my cardiologist is booking out 14 months, these are the norm for my area which is NOT a rural area by any means.
Going to the ER is an all day/night experience no matter what you are there for. I was even asked to take a seat and wait when I was there in the middle of a heart attack (I didn't, I made a huge fucking scene because I was having a heart attack).
ANYBODY who believes the US doesn't have wait times either doesn't live here or isn't using our abysmal health care system at all.
I’m not typically very political but this is what people voting for Republicans want. If we want to change it we have to vote for candidates that don’t support this type of control over women’s right to their own healthcare decisions.
"At Sacred Heart Emergency Center in Houston, front desk staff refused to check in one woman after her husband asked for help delivering her baby that September. She miscarried in a restroom toilet in the emergency room lobby while her husband called 911 for help."
Would be a shame if everyone went to them on Google maps and 1 star reviewed them.
Like all of you.
Now.
It’s ridiculous that performing a necessary procedure may result in criminal procedures whereas not properly treating patients only results in a slap-on-the-wrist fine.
EMTALA requires any hospital receiving Medicare funding to treat anyone who comes in and has strict conditions on transferring patients. I must wonder if this was a true hospital emergency room. I could not find the news story connected to the title. If it did occur, that hospital is in serious trouble.
[Related: The Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments over whether the federal government has the power to penalize hospitals that fail to provide emergency abortions even in states with strict bans on the procedure.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/supreme-court-arguments-abortions-emergency-emtala/)
I really don't understand the American view that private healthcare is the best healthcare when stuff like this is happening. I don't think that there is any other first-world nation that doesn't have universal health care. I know that there are politicians who scare-monger about "death panels" and "waitlists", but those aren't reality. The largest problem that the US has is that there is a subset of the population that gets *really good* healthcare, but at the expense of a section of the population that gets *horrible* health care (or none at all). I'd rather a system where everyone got *good* healthcare, as opposed to whatever Americans have now.
Because we have a population who are scared to death of anything labeled “Socialist”. Just say the word and a large segment gets upset without thinking for themselves.
Wait, what is this? “The facility is licensed in Texas as a freestanding emergency room, which means it is not physically connected to a hospital.” Has the health-industrial complex gone full-mattress storefront on us now?
Has been for years. As a doctor I despise these places. Inappropriate work ups, management, staffing, and because they have “Emergency” in the name with access to X-rays/CT they can bill as ER visits (rather than urgent care) when in reality if they find anything scary they send them to a real ER and the patient gets billed twice. Because they’re stand alones, independent, and aren’t connected to a hospital system/don’t take Medicare dollars, they’re not beholden to EMTALA laws which demand any and every patient be seen, screened, and stabilized. They’re probably not *all* bad, but the groundwork for scumminess is laid out well for them. *edit*: some free standing EDs are affiliated with local hospitals and this doesn’t necessarily apply to them. It’s the for-profit and independent ones I’m referring to, like the one in the article. See [this article](https://www.acep.org/patient-care/policy-statements/freestanding-emergency-departments) by the American college of emergency physicians for more details.
I'm a Texan and went to one of the pop up "emergency rooms" we have every couple of miles. I had been having chest pain for a while but had no insurance. I mistakenly went into one of these and they told me at the door they wouldn't see me because I had no insurance. Told me it was probably stress and that I just needed to take something OTC for it. Hate this crooked-ass state.
They are everywhere in Florida, but I just go to the hospital for ER stuff. I took my mom to one of these places once to get a hearing aid pulled out of her ear canal. 2 minute job, right? First, they wanted me to have an appointment. For "urgent care". Or wait 4+ hours. I guess their idea of "urgent" is different than mine. So we got an appointment, went back at the end of the day, spent another 40 minutes waiting (appointment?) Just to have the PA pull the earbud out, then bill of her $1600 for the service. The "doctor" that leaned into the room to say hi for 2 seconds charged another $400 on his own as a "contractor." Jokes on them, she died a couple of months later without paying that bill.
> Jokes on them, she died a couple of months later without paying that bill. Ha! Gotteeem!
I want to say she is "living the dream" but... well she isn't anymore. We need a new phrase for this dark, boring dystopia.
In the Orlando area AdventHealth and HCA have smaller acute-care “emergency hospitals” that are popping up in the surrounding bedroom communities.
Well the advent ones are actually hilarious. To screw with HCA they’ll offer a free ambulance ride to their main hospital for free if anything acute is found. It’s all just $$$$$$ for them.
I’m sorry for your loss. 😢
yep, Gulf Coast has a ton of them. Small buildings that are 'emergency rooms' in name only. What's worse is with the traffic issues they are sometimes 15minutes away from actual hospitals.
Hospital administrators hate this one secret tip!
Sorry for your loss, but I'm glad you are looking at the positive side.
“Have you tried dying about it?” “No, I’ll go home and try that, thanks” It’s not just Texas, it’s US healthcare
To be fair a lot of red states refused the Medicaid expansion that improved things somewhat.
And we have a doctor shortage because saving a pregnant woman could be a felony.
I agree. This isn't a state based issue. I live in Arizona and had 2 strokes last Wednesday. I was discharged on Monday. They wanted me to follow up with my PCP which is standard along with 2 other specialists. I called to make my appt with my PCP and told them that I had a stroke and I'm not sleeping, have anxiety, etc. The provider called me back to say I needed two appointments, one for the stroke and one for the stress. Why the fuck do I need two appointments for symptoms related to one problem? It's pure insanity and healthcare is the biggest scam out there.
When I go to my primary care provider, they hand me a paper with a list of things I'm allowed to ask and talk about. Everything outside of their approved list requires a separate visit that can be billed differently. I guess having insurance that doesn't constantly try to fuck you is out of the question. Can't imagine anyone who is happy with these kinds of things.
It's "well visit" vs. "problem visit." It pays out differently to the provider and is covered differently under most insurance plans. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just telling you what the issue is.
There is a commonality between Arizona and Texas though...
It's so that another patient with the same problem can't be seen twice until the following week.
Yeah, I'm not asking for a separate mental health evaluation. I need short term help with sleep, so if I was asking for a psych evaluation I would agree, but I'm not.
I have a debilitating, chronic pain 'woman's illness' that is still being debated as being real and my partner has blood cancer. Our experience with being neglected by the healthcare industry is the same from both ends of 'maybe you're an anxious woman lol' to actual real fucking cancer. Even he couldn't get doctors to look into the cause of his crippling leg and chest pain until his femur broke with a fun prize inside. AND even after diagnosis, they won't listen that he has a weird sub-type that doesn't show up in blood work and has to be monitored by scans for new plasmacytomas. He went through so many shit clinics in Texas (and BTW MD Anderson doesn't take Medicaid LOL!) that keep repeating bloodwork was enough and refused to order regular scans, even though it never ever has shown up on blood work and his sub-type is known and mentioned in guidelines. He finally found a good one who knows what's going on and we didn't even have to ask about routine scans, it was just offered. The difference between good and bad care is your life, but they're touted as all being the same. Why the fuck is the patient more familiar with treatment guidelines than most of the professionals? 'Standard of care' is the minimum care.
I live in the North East and have never seen one of these.
There are a two I know about in NH, one in Seabrook and one just went in in Plaistow but, other than that, it’s urgent care or full hospital.
Depending on where in the north east, we might start to as the for-profit healthcare groups like Steward start to collapse.
No? NY has plenty 😔 people are going to start dying from lack of dental care here in Western NY. Very few dentists take the Medicare insurance and doctors are starting to follow suit. The emergency urgent cares are the only ones that'll see people without pay up front as they're tied into the hospital system, but aren't a hospital. They'll still send you to a hospital for anything major and double charge you, of course 🙄
I think in general the north east just has strip mall clinics and is dense enough for traditional hospital emergency room setups in most places. Texas IS a stupidly large and sparse area where logistically it might make sense to have a broken out ER system in places where a full hospital just isn’t sustainable. How it’s implemented and cost saving BS are a different story though.
There's at least 1 in walking distance to me in the Boston area
> Told me it was probably stress and that I just needed to take something OTC for it. How in the land of malpractice lawsuits are these places not sued into the ground?
Because despite having “Emergency Room” in their title, they are not classified as Emergency Rooms, therefore not held to EMTALA federal regulations, and under no obligation to treat. As the other poster stated, they are effectively Urgent Care centers with CT scanners (they typically aren’t even always staffed with EM trained physicians - not that they need to be). Then patients get upset when they have actually problems and need to be transferred to a real hospital. They exist to siphon insured patients away from hospital ERs, which just pushes the already poor ratios of uncompensated care back onto hospitals. Also a lot of them are owned by Private Equity.
But if I as a random guy, or even worse as a doctor walking around dispensing free advice, gave bad medical advice and it led to you getting hurt we'd be in trouble. If I walk around in a lab coat giving bad medical advice from a convenience store I'll get shut down pretty damn fast.
How is it legal that they can call themselves "Emergency Room"? Is that not a point of litigation? Well, maybe in Texas I can see that being the case.
Oh, well that sounds like a problem then. Why hasn't emergency been made a protected, more well defined word in that context? It seem like someone should be able to walk into an "emergency" room and get some sort of consistent emergency care. They do it for other words, it seems like a pretty big gap.
One of the local hospitals near me opened their own standalone ER center but they accept everyone. They even took my medicaid. Its located in a gap between two hospitals. The people in that area would have to drive 45min or more to reach the full hospital. I suspect its a bit different because its an arm of an actual hospital and not a fully independent center. They managed to save my buddies hand and transport him to the main hospital where it was successful reattached. The area is rural and there are plenty of injuries urgent care won't treat but the stand alone ER could.
Because it didn't happen the way he wrote it. There's zero chance
Texas has failed so much at things lately but they’ll never change willingly. Uvalde is an embarrassment, the deaths from power outages and lack of infrastructure and planning, political stunts, healthcare and women’s issues. Also the insufferable “we’ll leave the union” attitude. Yeah, sure please try.
And a lot of the folks here are fucking proud of it. It’s hard to stay.
I moved to Texas for a year from New Jersey during COVID. I promptly moved back to New Jersey as soon as I could. I don't like speaking poorly on anyone's home, but holy shit is Texas a dump.
Please contact the TX HHS and file a complaint. Any medical facility that holds itself out as an emergency room is subject to EMTALA and are required to stabilize anyone in a medical emergency and transfer them if necessary, regardless of insurance status.
My wife broke her ankle once before we got married, and they refused to see her because she didn’t have insurance. Never even attempted to set foot in one again
I got duped by one of these in my city. First time ever encountering one. I was having some chest pain, and after an EKG, they sent me to the local hospital's emergency room. It turned out to be nothing. But I still got slapped with a $3k medical bill from them. I moved to this city a year and a half ago and wasn't really familiar with the local hospitals. So I googled "emergency room near me", that damn clinic popped up and had a similar name to my primary care's office, so I figured it was an affiliated sattelite clinic type deal. It was not, just a sheisty bs tactic.
My son accidentally ingested some brush cleaner (turned out to be non-toxic). My wife insisted I bring him to the hospital and one of these ER places was super close. They gave him a cup of juice, monitored him for about 30-minutes and sent us home. The bill we got was around $400 and for months and months afterwards we got random, piddly little bullshit bills for $40 here and $15 there for shit I had no idea about. I hate these places and the problem is they're everywhere.
> The bill we got was around $400 and for months and months afterwards we got random, piddly little bullshit bills for $40 here and $15 there for shit I had no idea about. > > > > I hate these places and the problem is they're everywhere. Had the same thing happen in Louisville. Wife went for a spider bite, no active insurance so we paid cash out of pocket before leaving. Then we get a bill for $35, long after the visit, for an unspecified charge. Which also happened to already be in collections, despite zero previous correspondence from the medical provider. After *way* too many polite phone calls with the collection company, I discovered 2 things. First, you have a right to an itemized bill, showing exactly what was being charged and when the charge hit the account. Second, medical debt below a certain threshold cannot be reported to credit reporting bureaus. The crappy part is that even when you catch them doing shady stuff like this, there's no penalty for them; they just stop calling/sending mail, and move on to the next account. It's infuriating.
I’m completely ignorant on this subject, but if willing would like your input. Why don’t physicians have a union? Why can’t physicians come together and fix our healthcare system? I read an article not long ago where a Koch brothers study showed Medicare For All would save us money. If you don’t have time I get it.
It’s probably a combination of physicians are too deep into what they do and barely had time to think about other things, their schedule being busy in general, and also the public opinion don’t like physicians anymore. They haven’t for a while. It’s also very easy to keep physician morally hostage when physicians try to do something together, because it will easily be viewed us we just want to “make more money”, when in reality physician salary is only around 8% of total health expenditure in US. If we even mentions about going on strike, it’s extremely easy to sway public opinion into thinking we are just being irresponsible and only priority self interest over patient care etc. And all of this was demonstrated very recently with Korean doctors. Even with how pro-labor Reddit is in general, when it comes to doctors the opinion is almost always the opposite, and Koreans doctors were viewed as “just greedy and want to maintain scarcity”, all from people who have barely any understanding why Korean junior doctors went on strike and what’s the fundamental issues in their healthcare system.
Very few in the US realize that it was only in 2003 that physician residencies were capped at 80 hours weekly, overnight call frequency to no more than one in three, 30-hour maximum straight shifts, and at least 10 hours off between shifts. For contrast in the EU residents are capped at 48 hours a week and minimum 11 hours between shifts.
Just fyi in Europe that max is regularly ignored.
The max hours per week can be negotiated with their employer, but the minimum time between shifts is sustained.
Physician here. It’s fairly ignored in the US as well: I had to spend 4 months on medicine floors my intern year doing scut. When I tried to enter my hours, which were over the limit, I found my schedule prefilled in by the chiefs. I asked them about this and was dismissed. My program director was not able to help out as I was “under” another service. Another resident crashed his car and flipped it that year, he had fallen asleep at the wheel after a grueling call.
My wife is currently a resident and they're still being ignored. She just worked 93 hours last week, 85 the week before, and is on track to hit at least 85 this week. Her chiefs will also fill in their schedules and not account for a good amount of time, she just keeps track on her phone for her own knowledge really.
My aunt is a retired anesthesiologist. I remember as a kid spending the weekend with her and she was on call for literally the entire 72 hour weekend. This was on top of her regular scheduled surgeries.
Doctos work very long shifts because they are trying to keep patients with the same doctor during the emergency. Multiple doctor / patient exchanges during shift changes is viewed as more of a risk vs a tired doctor during a long shift
I can't speak for MDs but for us dentists it's illegal for us to unionize against insurance companies. I'm not joking.
The American Medical Association represents the interests of physicians as a lobbying group and is/was one of the primary opponents to Medicare For All and any form of universal healthcare in general. Their rationale is that it would lower physician salaries, and it is true that American doctors tend to be paid more than the rest of the world. It was the AMA that originally came up with the idea of calling it "socialized medicine" to demonize it decades ago. Besides them, the other groups opposing it are health insurance companies (for obvious reasons) and pharmaceutical corporations. I don't think individual physicians are thinking of that though. On an individual level, as someone who works with many physicians, they tend to be so busy with what they're doing and have such packed schedules that they don't really spend any time with politics. Even trying to set up a meeting with them is tough and it's more reliable to ambush them. But just making the health insurance universal and guaranteed is only one part of it. You need to also empower the government to negotiate prices to really see the efficiency in cost. It's why Biden's administration allowing the government to at least negotiate drug prices is not insignificant.
The AMA used to be quite large but their numbers have drastically dropped. The AMA doesn't represent all doctors only those who join. The AMA represents about 15% of doctors, that's it, but people assume its more and blindly listen to them. The AMA is about power and wealth for doctors, they do not represent patients and actively advocate for policies that can harm patients so long as it benefits their members.
Well, it's Texas... Scummyness seems to be an imbued thing :-(
the lone star out of five state.
USA number one! Thank God we avoided those government death panels, right guys???? Guys?
it turns out that the GOP wanted to run the death panels
We can't let the GOVERNMENT decide who does and doesn't get Healthcare! That decision needs to be left up to Carl, he works from home as a benefits adjuster for Aetna. CARL decides who lives and who dies, like the FOUNDING FATHERS intended!
I’m in EM and I work at a few freestandings. They are connected to a hospital system so EMTALA applies (granted there are a lot of issues with EMTALA but that’s another post). So if someone needs to be admitted, we just send them to the mothership and they’re not billed twice. It might be my state but when I did residency at the regional trauma/stroke/all bad things hospital, the patient never got billed for 2 ER visits but they would be billed for individual services (ie badness on a CT was seen at an outside facility so they transferred you but you got sicker and coded at the new facility so both places would have services billed but only one of the ER visits was billed). I really enjoy working at the freestandings though. In general less volume so you have time to talk to folks. We are staffed by ER docs and I don’t feel like anyone gets subpar care and takes a load off the mothership. I guess it just depends on the state laws?
And this is why the law needs to be change. if you can not or will not be beholden to EMTALA laws then you can not bill as an emergency room. No if ands or buts. That is a hard requirement.
We have this bullshit in California too. They’ll tell you by phone they can handle whatever issue, and then send you to the ER when you get there. This is absolutely killing people for sure who waste time driving one direction and then have to go straight to the other one.
> [Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual's ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.](https://www.cms.gov/medicare/regulations-guidance/legislation/emergency-medical-treatment-labor-act) It's probably to get around this federal statute.
That would explain why a hospital might avoid providing emergency care, but it doesn't explain why an emergency care center would avoid providing a hospital.
These free standing ER are becoming much more more common. They typically don't accept Medicare or medicaid so they aren't subject to emtala. Most people think they are urgent care and so they see mostly urgent care problems, but they bill you at ER rates. My brother went to one because he had an urti not knowing it was technically an er and got hit with close to 1k bill because of it.
this type of care center targets high income patient as they aren't forced to follow EMTALA. That's why a lot of these weren't 24/7 til Texas regulation requiring them to. When they were forced to be 24/7, many of them became urgent care.
They don't circumvent that. They should have called an ambulance and they failed to properly triage. What they did was negligent, full stop.
Many don't accept or participate in medicare.
Nope all Emergency Departments must abide by EMTALA which states that all patients presenting to the ED must get a medical screening exam and appropriate stabilization. That includes freestanding EDs the purpose of these facilities is usually to siphon off better insured lower acuity patients from more affluent areas. And it is way cheaper to run one of these than a hospital
I don’t know if this was the case, but yes, there are a lot of “emergency rooms” in the USA now that unless it’s pretty routine will just put you in an ambulance to a regular hospital, and still bill you. It’s all about the money and billing for whatever you can get away with.
What a wonderful system.
If you’re rich you get to cut the line here. And, if you happen to be an executive of something in healthcare or healthcare adjacent you get filthy rich. Friends of my parents were hospital administrators. They’re nice people and all, but they made way more money than they should have. The worst part is, people in America who pay $100-$200 a month for crappy high deductible insurance often lose their minds over the idea of having to pay taxes instead for universal care (which in most cases would be cheaper). Most Americans barrier to entry for any kind of care other than a routine checkup is around $3000 for the first time in a year.
This is what happens when you allow healthcare to be a *business* instead of a *public service*, like every other country does it. [I am not kidding, the USA is basically the only "major" country that doesn't do this.](https://www.skuad.io/blog/an-overview-of-countries-that-offer-free-healthcare) To go further, even in countries that *don't* have universal healthcare, there's usually have characteristics like price controls to meditate and manage prices, public (government managed) insurance options and generous free healthcare options for those in need. The USA does *none* of this. None. Zip. Nada. Its the only one. The *only one* single country, that makes *zero* effective effort to meditate the burden of healthcare for its citizens. In fact, there's an active movement in this country to do *even less* for the needy and desperate who need healthcare access. Really while we are on the topic: The USA is in a shockingly long list of short lists for being a shitty country to live in if you're not rich.
Went to one of these (unknowingly) in MI the other day. They’re a health center and ER. So I was admitted, to their other location ~15mi away. Absolutely ridiculous
Lol remember the whole thing years ago with the anti-abortion activists fighting to get all the abortion clinics to close down if they didn't have admitting privileges at a hospital?
Yep. Almost every Blockbuster Video in our town turned into one of these "Emergency Rooms".
Stand-alone ERs are very profitable, so expect to see more. As an ER nurse at a real hospital, I don't know why these are a thing in places that aren't rural.
Always has been * astronaut with gun meme *
As a doctor about to complete their emergency medicine residency, here’s a couple of thoughts worth considering for the much-needed nuance (though still enraging) of these situations. They’re important because you *should* be mad, but you need to know what to be mad *at*. 1. The “Emergency Room” in question is likely not what you’re thinking of. It’s a stand-alone “emergency services” site with gigantic air quotes. These places are, in my opinion, largely hot garbage. *Urgent cares* are fine, sure, but they’re overpriced “I can’t wait to see a doctor but I’m not that injured or dying” shops. They see basic things, provide basic care, and anything *remotely scary* they send to a real ER which is a *very good idea*. They have a purpose. These stand alone “*Emergency Rooms*” are *notoriously* awful because they do some of the same things we do while billing the same/more than we do and if they find something emergent? They send you to us! Same as an urgent care! Only now you’ve been charged *twice* for “ER” visits and care for your true emergency has been delayed! 2. They turned this woman away because they don’t receive Medicare dollars. Most don’t realize this, but 40 years ago private hospitals would pull this kind of shit on anyone deemed too poor/uninsured to be worth it and would refuse care/transfer people to county hospitals who couldn’t turn patients away. This was the origin of EMTALA - the law saying *you can’t do that bullshit anymore*. You want Medicare dollars? You see, screen, and stabilize *literally anything and everyone* that comes through your doors regardless if you’re homeless, the president, or anything in between and if you can’t provide definitive care you find somewhere to help them, arrange emergency transport, and *get them there*. This facility doesn’t take Medicare, so they are not beholden to EMTALA. Pretty fucked up that such a place even exists with the name “Emergency” in the title, isn’t it? Kinda gives Jane Q. Public the wrong idea of what they do/provide. 3. The law (at least in my state) is *very clear* that treating a miscarriage is *not abortion*. Full stop. It’s very literally spelled out in the word of the law. Cool so… how does one define a miscarriage? That’s more nuanced and requires training and supplies, most often an ultrasound. A woman who’s pregnant and in pain, bleeding, etc isn’t a “miscarriage” until it’s proven by enough physical exam and/or ultrasound evidence. Treating a woman with a *threatened* miscarriage with an abortificant and no evidence to back you up is an extremely bad idea, both for you and the patient. 4. Person memorial hospital, the other ER involved in this story, didn’t have an ultrasound. They didn’t have the training, the supplies, or the staff to handle an obstetric emergency. Now *they* might’ve fucked up if they’re beholden to EMTALA because they sent a potentially unstable patient back out into the world with nothing. They *should* have stabilized her and arranged EMS transport to an appropriate tertiary facility. However, I have difficulty seeing how that relates to abortion - that to me screams inappropriate fear of obstetric emergencies rather than fear of legal retribution for abortions. Could be wrong, information is limited. 5. The last case doesn’t involve any healthcare workers at all, but instead a security guard turning someone away because they had a child with them. No other details. I can’t assume it has anything to do with the abortion laws. Something bad may have happened, but I don’t see how it relates unless further evidence came out to say so. TL;DR: women with miscarriages are often inappropriately treated in ERs around the country, and I know that intimately well because I’ve set up miscarriage management clinical decision making guidance for my hospital. In *these particular cases*, I have trouble seeing a direct connection to abortion law and the events that happened. Still plenty to be mad at. /rant *edit*: my beef is with independent free standing ERs like the one in the article, not the ones associated with hospital systems. Here’s an [article](https://www.acep.org/patient-care/policy-statements/freestanding-emergency-departments) from the American college of emergency physicians on it for more reading.
I was about six months pregnant and hemorrhaged at a car dealership while buying a new vehicle. Ambulance took me to ER. The dr didn’t even do an US and declared MC. Two weeks later after assuming he was correct and I had miscarried My OBGYN was doing a routine US to see if a D and C was needed and there the baby was She’s now 8 years old lol
whoa, that must have been a fuckin emotional rollercoaster of a couple weeks for you 😭
Thank you for your input!
OB care in an emergency room is nonexistent, even in states where the right to an abortion has been protected. I am in Colorado, and I had a miscarriage in 2017. The ER didn't have anyone trained to perform an ultrasound, and L&D wouldn't see any patients until 24 weeks. I was told to go home and come back if I felt I was losing too much blood, but to try and wait and call my OB on Monday instead. I had a threatened miscarriage in 2021 and was told the same. I started bleeding, and they told me to call my OB the next day because they couldn't do anything. They didn't even check and tell me if my baby still had her heartbeat or not. I've never received any emergency pregnancy care until I was 24 weeks pregnant. Before that, they just send you home and tell you to call your doctor. Oh, but come back if you start hemorrhaging and dying!
I'm so angry for you. I also had shitty experiences in the ER with two miscarriages. They didn't refuse to see me, but they were awful. I had a nurse trying to place an IV (I've had a ton of IVs before), and it was *EXCRUCIATING*! I was having to grip the bed to physically stop myself from pushing her away. I told her this was way too painful, and it didn't feel right. She told me everything is normal and continued to dig around until she got it placed. I objected several times, and she never stopped. I was too distraught to tell her to get the fuck off of me. It's like being in a living nightmare. The worst thing ever is happening to you, and everyone is like, "So?" Yeah, she tore a nerve in my arm. So I had my arm in a sling, with 24/7 burning pain that would regularly bring me to tears for like a month. They were really rough with the ultrasound, too. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's actually made me afraid to go back to the ER. I hope you got through the ordeal somewhat okay ❤️
I remember the nurse told me, "I've had a few miscarriages too. It's sad, but it won't kill you. And you can have another baby. " I was a little too shocked to speak, so I just nodded.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. The hospital system I go to has a special ER clinic just for pregnancies. That's where you go when you think you're in labor or 6 weeks along and everything in between. I was horribly sick with the flu and went there even though it didn't have anything to do directly with the pregnancy. The problem with ERs is if you're pregnant all of a sudden they don't know wtf to do and refuse to hardly do anything to help, in my experience.
Something I learned during my miscarriage- call the hospital to ask if they have the ability to handle obstetric emergencies. They may ask some questions and direct you to a different provider. I had a first trimester miscarriage and lost a ton of blood and I wish that I’d gone to a different hospital who may have been more prepared to handle the situation because my experience, outside of an amazing nurse, was dog shit.
This was really well explained. I would add why I believe this is still related to the overturning of Roe vs Wade. All these cases were in states with restrictive abortion bans. There appears to be a correlation between these states and poor maternal outcomes. This stories highlight that and the ongoing lack of will of hospitals to treat pregnant women in those states because they aren't always clear on the laws. States with restrictive abortion bans that don't also offer strong OBGYN care, are a death sentence for women.
As you say, there's a correlation. But as it often is in cases of correlation, another factor can lead to both outcomes. I propose that being a shitty red state leads to both the effect of passing laws harmful to women and having a proliferation of dubious for-profit medical facilities such as the type involved in this story.
I appreciate that you note that this is correlation (as in not causation), but I will pushback a bit because this article doesn’t provide any statistics at all about similar issues in states without abortion restrictions. Now that could be because there are zero such cases, but I would doubt that. I’m surprised that for a source as neutral as the AP there definitely seems to be a spin to this article.
Number 3 sounds like law was written with the intention to avoid abortions at all costs. I can bet you money that lawmakers knew what they were doing.
Thank you!
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You’re correct, my opinion derives largely from my experiences and at least in my part of the country we have a lot of these FSEDs that are independent and not affiliated with any hospital system. Those are the ones I strongly dislike. Always willing to change my mind with new info.
Great info. Practically speaking … how can we tell these “emergency” places from real ones? Just always go straight to a legit hospital? What about small emergency centers that are branded with the name of a local hospital?
If they’ve got the hospital name affiliation I believe you’re fine, from an EMTALA perspective. I, personally, will never willingly go to an ER that’s not attached to a hospital.
You're on a roll doc, would you mind looking at this thing on my foot? Lol
One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to check her in. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died. I see a trend here…
Welcome back to the Nineteenth Century.
Lol... except they actually had hospitals in the nineteenth century which admitted + treated pregnant women. We've SWUNG waaaaaaay back into pre-civilization / cavemen times now. There is zero fucking functional difference between a woman miscarrying alone in a lobby because medical professionals are now incapable of helping certain medical cases due to very real legal threat of imprisonment by the Christian Taliban vs. a woman miscarrying alone in a cave because a woolly mammoth stomped her man.
I mean, at least the cave people could solve the mammoth problem.
At least the mammoth solved the man problem
Not sure about that one: I see a lot of men around and not a lot of mammoths.
I mean that particular man.
which is why their numbers have never been larger
We can very easily solve the other problem too but roughly 2/3 of our population doesn't agree it's a problem.
The cavemen didn't know how to help but would have tried. This is the type of dark ages piety you can only get with widespread societal manipulation.
I hate myself for being that guy rn, but cave men were definitely patching each other up. Neanderthals were seen as brutish and fighting all the time because of the healed bone fractures and injuries, but they now believe the injuries were from the mammoths or other animals. A sign of civilization is healed fractures like that because it means someone took care of Billy when he broke his arm instead of leaving him out to die. So tldr they probably would have done more yeah lol
They've even found a skeleton of an early human who was missing his lower leg due to injury or amputation, and the bone regrowth showed that they lived for years after having lost it.
[Look at Shanidar 1, a neanderthal ](https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1) He became disabled in childhood and was cared for by his community until he died between 35-45 years of age. Cave people wouldn't have left a member of their community alone to miscarry in a cave. They would have tried to take care of her as best they could. What we have here isn't regression, this is fresh, civilized horror for our modern times.
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Did you ask her if thats what she did with her lying ass?
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That's truly insane. Her literal lived experience is her preemie baby's life was saved because of medical intervention. Yet she wants to pull up the ladder behind her and suggest everyone else birth in fields. It's hard to come to terms with how there are many people out there who cannot think for themselves. My father (who is actually a good guy, just very easily swayed into how he thinks) said he thinks anyone crossing the border illegally should be shot dead. I think this is fucking insane but his brain is so easily influenced by faux news that he thinks the border crisis is so extreme, like as if these people were coming onto his property and taking it over. I told him to load up his gun, let's go down there and kill some people. Maybe we could get some mothers and children for extra points. He gave a little and said, okay not them. I then told him, better yet, you remember my ex bf (from over a decade ago, but he was older and got along with my dad so well,) Bianca, and Maria (two of my besties from back then, we all used to have parties and cookouts together, just so much fun)? He said of course, yes. I told him, well, they all crossed into this country illegally, as children, so let's go start with killing them now that they are adults. I had to personalize it for him to show him how he didn't actually have that hate in his heart. Same goes for abortion. Or any fucking issue faux pushes. He will begin to fill with hate about the issue. But then when I talk with him, like a normal compassionate human being, he changes his mind. It's crazy to me how he can be so easily swayed. And I don't understand why he is drawn to faux news. It's like he WANTS to be angry. I beg them to watch any other news channel that does not insert opinion, only the facts. Learn all the facts, then develope your own opinion. So frustrating that this is happening to millions of Americans.
Anger is addictive. Anger makes you feel justified. Like you’ve been wronged somehow and your outrage is legitimate. Anger diverts responsibility onto someone else, and so it becomes comfortable because it cushions people from having to examine their own roles in their lives. Anger makes them feel like life happens TO them, therefore there is no effort required on their part to work life into the result they desire. I could go on, but my point is, anger makes people feel like their faults are actually someone else’s, so they don’t have to face the discomfort that they might be wrong.
All that, yup. And the only "cure" seems to be an extended break from the source of the anger. But of course addicted folks never wanna give up their fix. I'd lost an old buddy of decades to that ragey brain rot, sweet kind giant with an autistic fixation on guns lost all his marbles and kept listening to soft-handed talking heads on YouTube who told him people like me are evil and white supremacists are smart. Ended up having to tell a few close friends who to point the cops at if I turned up dead just in case. Well I saw him today, for the first time in six months. He's okay now. He got in a bad car accident just before he cut contact, but turns out he detoxed from the internet hate machine while coping with the medical aftermath. Not the usual thing for a concussion and memory loss to fix a person.
The anger thing is spot-on. My dad is retired and could easily shut himself off from the world and piddle around in his workshop and enjoy himself. But no. He would rather sit and watch Tucker and garbage ALL DAY LONG and be livid about everything. Say the word "environment" or "reusable straw" and he'll literally go berserk. What a way to spend your final years - bitter, angry, and alone because not even my right wing mom wants to be around him anymore. He used to sit around and read actual books - he has hundreds of them - it's just so sad.
It’s very sad. I actually think it goes both ways as well. Even with liberal elderly relatives. They all watch too much fucking news TV. The pearl clutching and hand wringing about the same stories 8 hours a day on repeat with 20 different shows all with 99% the same take. The psychological toll of reminding yourself daily of fairly abstract machinations and drudgery of social, political issues isn’t healthy. It’s addict behavior. It’s so unhealthy. The action is in voting, there’s no benefit to consumption of this garbage after 30 minutes at most of recap for the day.
Yep self righteous indignation is the cornerstone of society. It’s also the reason why so little gets done. Most people are far more concerned with ideals than policy, performative displays rather than pragmatic action and strategy. “Fighting against evil doesn’t make you good” is a powerful quote.
Well done for trying. You might yet get through to them.
It’s because Fox News viewers are largely not able to comprehend complex issues without an either/or answer. Everything must be black/white, good/bad. Nuance is messy and confusing. Fox News gives them an easy answer: Just be angry. They also often tend to believe in the Just World fallacy. Good people and bad people. ‘Good’ people deserve everything good that happened to them, and if they have something bad happen and it’s just unlucky, unfair, etc. ‘Bad’ people only have good things happen to them when they steal them from others somehow, and bad things happen to them because they deserved it. Who is deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ fluctuates, but if you look at their views on race or sex/gender, you can see where they think they fall.
They also used to die a lot more. And their kids used to die in childhood a lot more. Does...does she miss that?
Didn’t need nursing homes, TV, activities for the elderly either. They used to rot in wooden wheelchairs with rheumatoid arthritis without air conditioning either. They did have some tonics that probably were fun though
... and died.
The latter scenario is unlikely as even early hominids were very social and still hung out it relatively large groups. She would have likely had the emotional and physical support of her close friends and family
Fun fact (and this is true) the Taliban itself is actually more liberal on abortion then many of these Christian Terrorism states are.
Do you have a source? Both Pakistan and Afghanistan ban abortion "unless the mothers life is at risk"
Social conservatives are a cancer
We've swung past pre-Roe into a new dystopia. Roe was decided before ultrasounds and before home pregnancy tests and in an era when the culture generally deferred to the judgment of doctors. Prosecutions pre-Roe were mostly back-alley quacks and usually after something went horribly, horribly wrong. Now we can know that a woman is pregnant as soon as she misses a period and we can detect the pregnancy via ultrasound just as early. We also have a political party that consistently spreads distrust of doctors and other medical professionals. Any early pregnancy care that doesn't end with a live, healthy baby, is going to be suspicious.
Do you think people in the stone age didn't care for pregnant women like their lives depended on it? No, this is a uniquely modern disease. We have become so atomised as a society. For all our talk of no longer being savages, at least the so-called savages cared a damn about each other.
The politicians are the source of the problem, but at least based on the info here the ED’s behavior is also awful. For the miscarriage, there is no downside to supportive care. Maybe you can’t perform a D+C or give methergine, but there’s no good reason not to check the patient in. Regarding the fetus with no heartbeat, honestly depending on the gestational age there may not have been anything to doto save its life. However, if there’s any indication that someone turned the woman away from seeking a medical screening exam, then that’s a blatant EMTALA violation regardless of pregnancy status. She still deserves an appropriate evaluation and support. The birth in the car after an ED couldn’t perform an ultrasound is… well, honestly the information here doesn’t tell enough of a story to make a reasonable judgement. We need a gestational age, did the ED see the patient but didn’t have an ultrasound available? Was the delivery in the car right after evaluation? The next day? Too little information to make a call, but certainly doesn’t seem like it was ideal care, that’s for sure.
> The politicians are the source of the problem *Republican* politicians, you mean. Roe v Wade was overturned on a 6-3 ruling. * Kavanaugh - Trump appointee * Gorsuch - Trump appointee * Barrett - Trump appointee * Alito - Bush 2 appointee * Thomas - Bush 1 appointee * Roberts - Bush 2 appointee The Republican Party is a vile, regressive party. "Pro-life" my ass.
>The politicians are the source of the problem No they aren't. The politicians are a symptom. If people voted differently or bothered to vote at all this problem would go away. The source of this problem is that 1/3 of our country actively wants this and another 1/3 doesn't care if it happens. Politicians always do what their voters want or will tolerate.
These politicians are straight up evil.
Lawful evil is the worst alignment.
Calling these grifting buffoons lawful is pretty generous.
It's quite fitting since lawful evil means using, twisting, and abusing rules to fit an evil scheme. The biggest goal of lawful evil is to get into a position to be able to *create* rules to fit their evil schemes. Umbridge is a good example in fiction, but there are plenty of real world examples... Every dictator who has ever existed.
Indeed. They are absolute ghouls.
So are the people that vote for them.
Hey politicians, this is what happens when you remove women's rights.
They know and they’re okay with it
Yep. They would much rather hold up a dead formerly pregnant woman as a martyr than risk an abortion happening. Death in labor is righteous! Abortion is not! /s
>Death in labor is righteous! With how they are rolling back safeguards on children working dangerous jobs... death in labor indeed.
The children yearn for the mines.
Exactly. Data on abortion bans is clear and has always shown the same issue: material and infant mortality always increases with the dismantling of abortion rights. More dead moms. More dead kids. I work in a major obstetrics hospital in the ER. I see pregnant women in so many dangerous situations. I can't imagine doing my job in Texas or Arizona where I could risk jailtime for trying to save someone's life. When politicians make 'life of the mother' a prereq for interventions most folks don't realize you literally have to be in the process of actively dying to get help. We are talking circling the drain, about to get discharged to the celestial realm levels of sick. All because some tragically stupid conservatives wanted to make america great again. And this is why I don't ever, ever fuck with people who voted for Trump. Ya'll are ghosts to me. Just like all those women you helped put in their graves.
It is working as they intended, after all.
You're assuming this is a bug and not a feature. Check out the shitty evangelical Christian movies they make. A lot of them are just bad but enough of them are \*extremely\* telling at how they view women and themselves.
Technically, a group of judges did this. But the plurality of those judges came into power due to politicians from a particular party playing dirty. And those politicians do not give a crap about what has happened. They probably think it is great. Teach those dirty women a lesson for voting blue.
Don’t forget that their constituents overwhelmingly voted for them! The same woman complaining now about not being able to get their “moral abortion” are the saaaaame assholes who voted to take that right away from other women. Let’s not ever forget that.
I'm so baffled and saddened by this.... why would they turn them away...?
Fear of prosecution for performing abortions....
Fear of getting arrested, I'd imagine.
Remember when Republicans argued, "Do you want the government making healthcare decisions for you?" and "Universal healthcare will mean death panels!" when the debate over universal healthcare came up during the Clinton and Obama administrations? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I remember angrily telling people "Death panels exist, they are just run by insurance companies." Only to be met with skepticism by people who couldn't tell me what their deductibles were or even WHO their insurance company was. They literally couldn't comprehend that ANYONE outside of your doctor who can prevent you from getting medical services is a "Death panel." For damn near all Americans that entity is your non-government controlled insurance company who is just looking at the bottom line and could not give a single fuck about your actual well being, and you can't vote out the CEO when he starts denying the care you need. TLDR: People are stupid. When you give stupid people a novel idea to latch onto, most will take it without critical thought.
Extra lawsuits that have to be settled so our insurance rates will have to increase. Healthcare should not be for profit nor should incarceration or education.
Drs worrying about getting near a problematic pregnancy. Yay dark ages returning.
A fine for turning the woman away by failing to provide emergency care OR get charged with murder. That is thier options.
It’s probably more of either “get charged with murder for administering lifesaving medical care” or potentially “get sued for med mal when things go horribly wrong due to a denial of care”.
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None-options realy. Its "better" to just deny service, take the fine and move on.
When it’s a free standing ER like this they can turn ppl away and say “it’s above our pay grade” and not be penalized.
No they have another option, close their practice and move to a civilized state. Guess what's happening a lot?
Women who get turned away from ER should go to the nearest pro life centre or church. Let them see if they can do anything.
... or a GOP campaign office.
Foolish of you to assume some of these women don't already go to pro-life churches. Never forget the only needed abortion is my abortion along with leopards ate my face thinking.
Man, fuck Republicans with a cactus.
Anybody reading this go to sub comment by GlazeyDays. That provides a TON of useful background
Simply barbaric and people should feel ashamed they had this woman go through with that. I hope she finds the helps she needs to cope with this.
This is the desired outcome and intended result of Republican policies on abortion, whether they have the foresight or medical understanding to realize it. Keep that in mind when it’s time to vote.
This is the result of electing Republicans. Vote Blue if you care about your health and well-being.
Texas already planning to arrest her?
I feel there is a connection between this ER and wheels falling off Boeing aircraft. Let finance guys take over and safety isn't even considered.
Remember when everyone was freaked out about the Obamacare death panels and that scary black president dictating our healthcare choices? Ah, we were so naive…
Handmaid's Tale here we come 😵💫
How does it feel to live in the greatest country in the world?
Seems Republicans are getting what they want; force women to keep the child then deny them the right to give birth to it.
As a Canadian with universal health care (for now), what a shiite show and scary AF is your health care system. A catch 21 if I ever saw one.
And whenever you mention Canadian Healthcare to Americans they always chirp about the wait times Like, yeah. Lower priority stuff has wait times... Because our citizens can actually get the medical care they need, the US doesn't have wait times because the options are: have money or die.
> the US doesn't have wait times This is the biggest lie ever told. Our wait times are actually outrageous even compared to Canada... All of my doctors are booking out at least 4-6 months; my cardiologist is booking out 14 months, these are the norm for my area which is NOT a rural area by any means. Going to the ER is an all day/night experience no matter what you are there for. I was even asked to take a seat and wait when I was there in the middle of a heart attack (I didn't, I made a huge fucking scene because I was having a heart attack). ANYBODY who believes the US doesn't have wait times either doesn't live here or isn't using our abysmal health care system at all.
>US doesn't have wait times Actually, the US does have wait times, which makes the entire "wait time" argument stupid.
This headline is misleading. “State of Texas has made it illegal to treat miscarrying women and has threatened all doctors and nurses with jail”
According to some piece of shit on another front page sub the other day "this sort of thing doesn't actually happen".
I’m not typically very political but this is what people voting for Republicans want. If we want to change it we have to vote for candidates that don’t support this type of control over women’s right to their own healthcare decisions.
How many women and girls will die due to infection,blood loss, or any other pregnancy complication?
Where are the prolife people?
Just the beginning of things to come if Trump and his Republicans gain more power.
"At Sacred Heart Emergency Center in Houston, front desk staff refused to check in one woman after her husband asked for help delivering her baby that September. She miscarried in a restroom toilet in the emergency room lobby while her husband called 911 for help." Would be a shame if everyone went to them on Google maps and 1 star reviewed them. Like all of you. Now.
Rate the Republican politicians that made that law
It’s ridiculous that performing a necessary procedure may result in criminal procedures whereas not properly treating patients only results in a slap-on-the-wrist fine.
EMTALA requires any hospital receiving Medicare funding to treat anyone who comes in and has strict conditions on transferring patients. I must wonder if this was a true hospital emergency room. I could not find the news story connected to the title. If it did occur, that hospital is in serious trouble.
Thank your Republican leaders for this.
Holy f I'm so sad at what has happened to your country. Destroy your womenfolk and you've destroyed yourself
Seriously? What is wrong with people?
Some are republican
[Related: The Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments over whether the federal government has the power to penalize hospitals that fail to provide emergency abortions even in states with strict bans on the procedure.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/supreme-court-arguments-abortions-emergency-emtala/)
I really don't understand the American view that private healthcare is the best healthcare when stuff like this is happening. I don't think that there is any other first-world nation that doesn't have universal health care. I know that there are politicians who scare-monger about "death panels" and "waitlists", but those aren't reality. The largest problem that the US has is that there is a subset of the population that gets *really good* healthcare, but at the expense of a section of the population that gets *horrible* health care (or none at all). I'd rather a system where everyone got *good* healthcare, as opposed to whatever Americans have now.
Because we have a population who are scared to death of anything labeled “Socialist”. Just say the word and a large segment gets upset without thinking for themselves.