Not my fault you are dumb.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...eone-without-insurance-shows-up-er/445756001/
Who pays when someone without insurance shows up in the ER?
Maureen Groppe
USA TODAY
An ambulance arrives at a hospital emergency room.
WASHINGTON — If an uninsured patient shows up in the emergency room, who pays? The hospital? Taxpayers? The patient? Other patients?
The question is important as Republicans debate health care legislation that could result in more than 20 million fewer Americans having health insurance in ten years. If that happens, some people will go without care. Others will show up at hospitals, but won’t be able to pay their bills.
The year the Affordable Care Act passed, hospitals provided about $40 billion in "uncompensated care" — that is, care they were not paid for. That was nearly 6% of their total 2010 expenses.
A 1985 federal law requires emergency departments to stabilize and treat anyone entering their doors, regardless of their ability to pay.
But that doesn’t mean the uninsured can get treated for any ailment.
“There’s lots of medical care we want to consume that’s not an emergency,” said health care economist Craig Garthwaite, an associate professor and director of the health care program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
It also doesn’t mean that hospitals won’t try to bill someone without insurance. And the bill they send will be higher than for an insured patient because there’s no carrier to negotiate lower prices.
As a result, the uninsured are more likely to be contacted by collection agencies, as they face problems paying both medical and non-medical bills. One study, published in 2016 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that someone who goes into the hospital without insurance doubles her chances of filing for bankruptcy over the next four years.
