COBRA And EMTALA
Posted by Chris Martin at 12/9/2008 8:01 PM 
Categories: Health policy, Health Insurance, The Crash of 2008
Categories: Health policy, Health Insurance, The Crash of 2008
Is the acronym for some act that regulates benefits and pensions. I forget what the name was. EMTALA is the Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act.
COBRA enables you to purchase your employer's group health plan for six to nine months after you lose your job. EMTALA is a law that forces hospitals to offer care to anyone who shows up at their Emergency Department with a medical emergency or in active labor. Details here.
So in the past few months people have been losing their jobs and/or their health insurance at record rates.You know creative destruction and all that. Some compassionate conservatives have proposed that we extend COBRA rights for laid off employees to purchase their employers group plan for six or so months to help these people through the hard times.
Which would be fine except that the word that Wonks Anonymous hears at the office is that most of the people who are losing their jobs, surprise surprise, can't afford to make the COBRA payments. Also it seems that the special, affordable insurance programs for people with chronic illnesses are all full.
So the people who fall through the COBRA safety net get caught by G W Bush's favorite health insurance program. That would be EMTALA which doesn't cost the government or employers a thing because hospitals and doctors pay for it all.
That is until they can't pay for any more and go bankrupt. Which Wonks Anonymous expects to happen in about another year unless we do something. See here for details. After we lose a few more hospitals it's anybody's guess how well prepared we will be for the next emergency.
Can you please tell me again why we can't afford to reform health care?
COBRA enables you to purchase your employer's group health plan for six to nine months after you lose your job. EMTALA is a law that forces hospitals to offer care to anyone who shows up at their Emergency Department with a medical emergency or in active labor. Details here.
So in the past few months people have been losing their jobs and/or their health insurance at record rates.You know creative destruction and all that. Some compassionate conservatives have proposed that we extend COBRA rights for laid off employees to purchase their employers group plan for six or so months to help these people through the hard times.
Which would be fine except that the word that Wonks Anonymous hears at the office is that most of the people who are losing their jobs, surprise surprise, can't afford to make the COBRA payments. Also it seems that the special, affordable insurance programs for people with chronic illnesses are all full.
So the people who fall through the COBRA safety net get caught by G W Bush's favorite health insurance program. That would be EMTALA which doesn't cost the government or employers a thing because hospitals and doctors pay for it all.
That is until they can't pay for any more and go bankrupt. Which Wonks Anonymous expects to happen in about another year unless we do something. See here for details. After we lose a few more hospitals it's anybody's guess how well prepared we will be for the next emergency.
Can you please tell me again why we can't afford to reform health care?
Unfunded mandates anyone?
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What do mean EMTALA doesn't "cost the government or employers a thing? Like underpayments to hospitals from Medicare and Medicaid, the costs of uncompensated care and bad debt are shifted to the premiums of the insured.
A recent study of 2006 data by Milliman, Inc. estimates this cost shifting increases annual health spending for the average U.S. family by $1,788. It's reasonable to assume that figure is much higher today.
Irony. It does not appear on the budget and you can blame hospitals and providers for overcharging.
WA
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I can tell you exactly why we can't do anything about healthcare...because it's an all-or-nothing game. There are no other sides. We've got to offer (in some people's minds) Cadillac healthcare to all, or return to the best of the medicine man. To those on either side of the issue, those are the only alternatives available. Not a soul will think outside the box. That's the first problem.
Second is that healthcare will be suffering the same wage pressures manufacturing has (for forty years and culminating with the "Big 3" mess w have now), only with fewer payers involved, the unions will turn up the heat and costs will rise even more against a backdrop of falling (real) wages in any other category that competes with third-world and developing countries. In other words, we cannot afford to pay for the healthcare we can provide and that we have come to expect. And as we are seeing right now, even the government, cannot promise to be able to provide continuing care for all.
As with prescription drugs, I have maintained all along that whenever the "third party payer" system outweighs the out-of-pocket system, then graft, corruption, inflation (beyond the norm), price gouging, etc., etc. will occur because the end user no longer has to say no to exorbitant costs when there can be a choice.
Lastly, whatever solution out benevolent government provides, we all can rest well-assured there will be legions and layers of bureaucrats "on the dole" to make such a system workable, draining needed resources away from those who need them.
Just look at any city...Chicago?
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