Grady Memorial Hospital proposal to increase medical costs to some uninsured patients has alarmed advocates who say people will avoid care, become sicker and perhaps even die.
Grady officials on Wednesday stressed that the proposal is still in the discussion phase, but acknowledged it could cut off some people from free care.
Some of those people receiving free care have been abusing the system, and others have the finances to pay at least part of their bill, said Grady CEO Michael Young.
“We want to make sure that people who can afford to pay something will pay something,” Young said. “If they don’t have the means, they don’t have to pay.”
The plan is expected to be discussed Monday by the Grady board of directors, though officials said no final vote is expected.
Grady has already started screening people’s finances more carefully to spot those abusing the system, he said. Grady sent notices to 1,400 people this month telling them that they no longer qualify for the discount they had been receiving.
One person receiving discounted care was found to have a $750,000 house, he said. Some students have been receiving free care by only submitting their county address, when they should be the responsibility of their parents, he said. Other people hide the fact that they have insurance.
Young said he believes there are probably thousands of people abusing the Grady system by qualifying for free or discounted care they don’t deserve.
The most controversial proposal centers on prospective changes in the eligibility to receive a special “Grady card,” which allows people discounted, or even free, medical care.
Few advocates will admit it but there will always be some form of economic rationing in the provision of health care. Access based on one's ability to pay in a market based system is a form of rationing. Long lines that form a queue that people must wait in before receiving tax payer funded care is another form of rationing.
The two key axioms that must be considered are:
- Nothing in life is free
- If its free its likely worth as much
Their focus is perpetually upon what the SYSTEM will grant in the way of resources. Rarely will they ask the same of the people they hope to provide benefit for.
2 comments:
it sucks that people abusing the free and discounted healthcare ruin it for people that may truly need it.
"We still have hate-mongers in Congress who don't want to sit in doctor's offices with the rest of us. We still have people who believe that you have no right to healthcare if you are deemed sub-standard by their measures - either economically or socially or racially. Yes, they still think the racial and gender bias still endemic in the healthcare system is acceptable because in their minds those folks just haven't yet worked quite hard enough or smart enough to achieve what the elite have done. And it makes me sick to think that our first African American President or this Congress would suffer this sort of ugliness for one more moment in the name of bipartisanship."
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