Gubernatorial candidates across Tennessee today are filing away remarks U.S. Rep. Diane Black, R-Gallatin, recently made on MSNBC about changing a federal law in order to allow hospital emergency departments to turn away patients.
“I would get rid of a law that says that you are not allowed, as a health care professional, to make that decision about whether someone can be appropriately treated the next day, or at a walk-in clinic, or at their doctor,” she said.
The problem is that, with the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, many hospital emergency rooms have become treatment centers for sniffles, sore throats, and minor aches and pains. Since they are not allowed to turn away patients, the hospitals treat them even though they could be handled more efficiently – and cheaply – elsewhere. And, all too often, the hospital ends up eating the cost of treatment because patients can’t or won’t pay.
Erlanger Health System, for instance, in its 2016 annual report, said it provided $90 million in uncompensated care the previous year.
Black, one of several formidable Republican candidates for governor in 2018, was simply trying to sound the alarm – “an emergency room is not the proper place” for treatment – about one of the reasons health care costs are always climbing.