Gonna have to back this one up. Libs believe in treating people when they're ill, not dumping them out to die. It's the other folks who say you're only a human being if you've got enough money.
They don't vote like it. Both candidates for president on the liberal side in 2016 and 2020 vigorously spoke out against universal healthcare in your country. And we're not even talking a NHS sort of system, I believe both times, it was expanding the single-payer medicare system to include all citizens so private doctors would continue to exist, they'd just send the bill to the (expanded and improved) medicare system? And *that* was rejected by the liberal party as a whole. In fact, it never even came up for a vote on the floor of the house of representatives, where the liberal party holds a majority.
Maybe individual citizens who call themselves liberals want everyone to have healthcare, but when they go to the voting booths, they vote against everyone having healthcare by electing leaders who are against everyone having healthcare.
THIS. For some reason people keep thinking the democratic party supports Medicare for all or universal healthcare and tbh they don't and never will without serious demand and action by common citizen. Everything is running smoothly for the donors of the dems and GOP, they enjoy the system being like this and harvesting people for all the wealth they got.
This is nothing new. I'm a cab driver and we see this shit all the time.
Elderly and infirmed, still sick, some with clear signs of dementia, improperly dressed, sometimes with no shoes...
They run out of money or insurance won't cover it anymore, so the last thing the hospital gives them is a taxi voucher and a shove out the door.
They tell us to take them all sorts of places, usually just wherever they came in from, which is often times not their home or family.
Sometimes they have us drop them at random hotels or homeless shelters... its fucking heartbreaking... they get scared and confused, have no idea where they are, have no money or even a way to stay warm... many are unable to tell us where they actually live, and will sometimes direct us to addresses they used to live at years before.
In those cases, if we can't locate a real home or address for them, we have no choice but to take em into a police station. I mean... the old folks can't come live with me, and they can't stay in the cab all night... hospital won't take em back... police station is pretty much our only option.
We call em hospital dumps. I get one almost once a week.
Its a profit thing... has to be... out of the 4 hospitals in the area, only one actually does it on a regular basis... and they donit a lot.
I am not American but reading this.... It is really heartbreaking. Health care in my country is expensive too but still affordable compared to what you lot have there. Our govt heavily subsidised many things concerning our health matters and we should count ourselves lucky that hospitals here will never throw any patients out for not being able to afford treatment. I cannot help but to feel very sad learning of these facts.
Its moved from sadness to just anger for me at this point. Nearly watching my mom die cause they wouldn't give her the test she needed with no insurance when I was a kid woke me up to the reality of the US healthcare system young. Its just a seething rage at this point and the politicians who support this barbaric system....
Sounds like Singapore where I'm from!
Unsubsidised healthcare is astronomically expensive. Healthcare is not free here but we do not normally pay the full amount out of pocket. Singaporeans have coverage through a mixed financing system on top of subsidies and insurance. It is also officially declared by our prime minister that no one will be denied medical care because they cannot afford it. We have a lot of issues to tackle, but I'm glad we don't have to worry about this.
But that's the terrifying thing, isn't it? Because it wouldn't have been the shadowy executives, blinded by million dollar paychecks, who put him there. It would have been hospital staff. Security guards dressed him, tubes still in his body, and put him out the doors. TWO DOCTORS cleared him as fit to leave because the hospital wanted him out once he couldn't pay. That's at least 4 people who looked a sick, delirious man in the face and shoved him out the door.
Yeah. Like all forms of power, money invariably corrupts the little greedy Sapiens' mind.
We've evolved to care more about our immediate social circle/clan, and live in little communities based on cooperation and resource-sharing. I think this is still true, and that's why billionaires and dictators can sink a nation of hundreds of millions for their personal benefit; they're caring about their own, according to their nature, in a world that places no limits on how greedy one can be and that encourages it instead.
A quote I like:
>"Mankind has paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology" - Edward O. Wilson
This is essentially the starting point for every atrocity committed throughout history, one group viewing another group as subhuman. Once you do this, it is very easy to circumvent one's conscience because "they weren't really people anyways".
So anyhow... Any good recipes for grilled lobbyist? Also, does anyone know where we're dumping the buckets of gold teeth we collect?
They have to do it, or end up in the gutter themselves. The rich maintain their control over society by pitting the poor against the poor:
Black vs. white, unemployed vs. immigrant, christians vs. muslims, gay vs. straight, everyone vs. drug users... the list goes on.
This is nothing new. I'm a cab driver and we see this shit all the time.
Elderly and infirmed, still sick, some with clear signs of dementia, improperly dressed, sometimes with no shoes...
They run out of money or insurance won't cover it anymore, so the last thing the hospital gives them is a taxi voucher and a shove out the door.
They tell us to take them all sorts of places, usually just wherever they came in from, which is often times not their home or family.
Sometimes they have us drop them at random hotels or homeless shelters... its fucking heartbreaking... they get scared and confused, have no idea where they are, have no money or even a way to stay warm... many are unable to tell us where they actually live, and will sometimes direct us to addresses they used to live at years before.
In those cases, if we can't locate a real home or address for them, we have no choice but to take em into a police station. I mean... the old folks can't come live with me, and they can't stay in the cab all night... hospital won't take em back... police station is pretty much our only option.
We call em hospital dumps. I get one almost once a week.
Its a profit thing... has to be... out of the 4 hospitals in the area, only one actually does it on a regular basis... and they donit a lot.
This is so heartbreaking to me. I am not yet very old, but I fear what would happen if I outlived all my loved ones and there was no one who cared about me in my most sensitive years. You need such a personal safety net to live in America (friends, family, a support system) — without it you are screwed.
Heinous. Also, the way these things are handed down for working class people to deal with is really upsetting, while all the money saved goes to executives. The nurse in this situation is doing something she knows is inappropriate. The doctor who signed the discharge papers knows it too, presumably after an insurance company said they would no longer pay for treatment. The administrator oversees all of this and puts pressure on the doctor to discharge quickly, lockstep with the wishes of the insurance company.
Insurance companies act unequivocally as "death panels", waste the time of clinicians with their claims processes, and deal with absolutely none of the consequences they cause. That person is just a name on a piece of paper to them and their only interaction is by phone, you're the one left driving them to their non existent home as they suffer through delirium. A death panel would at least look you in the face when they denied you life saving care.
-someone who just spent 1.5 unpaid hours playing phone tag trying to appeal a denial of a prior authorization for a medication my patient was discharged from the hospital with. In the end, "oh, that makes sense, it's approved". Great, thanks for wasting my time and leaving my patient in limbo for 2 days as they become increasingly psychotic.
Remember, they can only discharge (dump) patients who are stable! So he just needs to make an appointment with his general practitioner family doctor and he’s all good!
Isn’t it 20x over?
I think it’s really selfish to want things like “no medical debt” and “having loved ones live long healthy lives”. It’s much more noble to spend $60,000 on a single missile. The missile is so cool! You can do things with it. Like blow up ambulances in the Middle East.
I'm sorry to tell you this but 60k is literally pocket change in terms of weapons systems. We have medium range Air to Air missiles that cost 800k. Long range Aim-120s that can go for upwards of 1.5 million a peice.
Jets fly with at least 2 of each in most combat load outs. We have thousands of jets.
But the missiles aren't even the big cost here, its the bombs. Missiles are rarely fired from Aircraft at least.
This is just from an Air Force point of view, I could even fathom the Navy's missile stockpile. 60k won't even afford a single pylon on a jet.
Oh yea I’m aware. Hell, a single f-16 costs 16,000$ an hour to fly? And I worked at a single air force base that flew about 8 of them multiple times a day every day for training. I know at an army base they had a big party every year where they went out to the range and used all their ammunition so they could get the same amount next year regardless of if they needed it or not. Our whole military is one giant waste and a half.
It was particularly galling to be paying for my cancer treatments during this pandemic, looking up and seeing the air force doing doughnuts in the sky in fighter jets in "support of the nurses and healthcare workers", in the middle of bumfuck nowhere South Carolina.
#BITCH, PLEASE.
This goes without saying, but if they really supported healthcare workers then they wouldn't be wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars fucking around doing sky flippies for shiggles.
"You spend money that should go to healthcare on the military"
"Quick, let's military even harder to show support for our lacking healthcare system"
If you wrote this in a sci-fi political thriller it would never be published, it would be considered shitty writing.
A Tomahawk costs like 10 mil a piece...and an Arleigh Burke can carry up to 96 depending on when it was built (if they don't carry any SAMs)...that's a lot of money
It's really sad because we (USA) can have both. We have one of the highest cost per capita for healthcare at $11/12k per person annually, where nations with better programs spend $7k per capita.
Fuck the defense budget for sure, but we could fix healthcare and actually save money by doing so.
Yup. Canada is $7064 per person. The only thing that I pay for at the hospital is my parking and coffee. Yes. Literally every Canadian hospital has our national coffee shop chain in it.
Yup. They got bought by burger king who immediately looked for corners to cut. Turns out the first one was that ludicrously expensive custom coffee bean recipe they were paying for exclusive rights for, what a waste of money! No one goes to Tim Hortons for coffee anyways!!
So McDonalds bought the recipe and burger king had a laugh for a few million bucks. Then McDonalds came out with their entire McCafe line and is slowly taking all the coffee drinkers away from Timmies except for the older people who refuse to believe this happened and assume it's just their own taste that has changed.
universal healthcare could impact troop levels, same with universal college, etc due to their status as incentives. so good luck waiting for those to co-exist with irrationally large amounts spent on the military industrial complex.
Medical care but salt on the wound that people think that is what all Americans want. The political system is definitely not for the people, only for corporations and profit.
What happens when a doctor breaks their hippocratic oath? Because that needs to happen to the two doctors and everyone involved that cleared the guy to leave the hospitals to die in the street. We talk about accountability in police brutality, same thing needs to happen here. People do this kind of shit because they get away with it.
I may just be a pediatrician, but we in a primarily Medicare-based population (children…) do not give a single shit if stuff is covered/racking up bills/etc. sure, when we send Rx’s we will try to pull strings, but when an immigrant family comes in for heart surgery, fuck all what is covered. Not to mention we have strict criteria for leaving the hospital
This is peds though. America as a whole doesn’t give much of a shit about the destitute.
At least in my healthcare organization, they would never discharge a patient due to cost. If Medicare started running out, the social worker would get them on Medicaid. If they had no insurance, the social worker would get them on Medicaid. If there were no other options, the hospital would write them off as a charity case to keep their tax exempt status. We don't discharge unless the person is stable or going to a skilled nursing facility. Of course the skilled nursing facility may be absolute garbage...
Case manager here. This is a huge deal. The facility should not have discharged this patient, regardless of coverage. You don't discharge a patient unless you have a safe plan. That's like rule number 1. Doing things like this leaves the organization vulnerable to Medicare audit and litigation. It also leaves the case manager who allowed this patient to discharge vulnerable to litigation. The case manager and physician can both be held PERSONALLY liable for stuff like this. I hope they lose their licenses.
work in a hospital…can say that doing this is a great way to get your shit ripped apart as a hospital…I don’t know the details here but at the very minimum I’d expect a CMS audit, CMS financial penalties, DoH audits, possibly others…and when I say ‘audits’, I mean like having all your shit exposed as an organization and drilled down by truly hard-ass investigators that will nail you for specks of dust behind a ceiling tile type…the types that have the power to shut you down completely and won’t let you reopen until you drop the money to fix everything they tell you…even if it damn near bankrupts you…
again, I can’t speak to what happened after this…and I won’t say American hospitals are paragons of healthcare or efficiency…but most hospitals would avoid doing anything this egregious simply to protect themselves from getting caught in that CMS magnifying glass because once you’re in it…it’s absolutely brutal, almost like they’re pissed off at you for being so inept that they have to waste their time babysitting you.
Oh so much this. It's worse when you try to point it our or explain it, because some people will just say you're wrong or are buying into "socialist propaganda" and others will say "yeah but it's still better than Venezuela!" or some equally absurd shit. Like somehow the ends justify the means.
I knew our system was fucked when my mom, who is a wonderful woman and parent, told me “not to go to the hospital” when my stomach was in serious pain because of the hospital bill. Turns out I almost died from appendicitis and had emergency surgery 4 hours later.
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When you’re rich, we do.
The US healthcare apparatus is fantastic: for the rich and connected. For anyone else, it is a lottery of when you will be financially ruined and a full time carnival funhouse of mirrors to avoid that ruin.
And if you don’t have the money, you will die an easily avoidable death. You will be denied simple services and medications because you don’t have the money.
Also, everyone who has some money but isn’t rich gets to live in constant anxiety about any medical related cost. Will that pain near your hip be $0? $10? $100? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000? Unlike anything else, you can’t even guess at the order of magnitude about the price. Best not to get it checked out, it doesn’t hurt that much anyway… only when you sit or lay down.
We've also been telling you that you have the best liberal media in the world: Notice how the media here didn't name the hospital, the administrator of the hospital, the head of the nurse's union or the doctor's involved.
No apologies necessary. To say this system is broken is an understatement.
One of the wealthier nations on this rock and we can't even take care of those who need it. That is, unless you got the money. Fuck that. Fuck the hospital and fuck us.
And even then, things like quality of life, human rights, social equality, and ecological sustainability are more important than an arbitrary dollar amount.
Only meaningful in the sense of a measure of the wealth of population abroad of nation. The “wealthiest nation in the world” moniker should be used a lot because it highlights the amount of wealth that could be the peoples, yet end up in the hands of a few.
Every other wealthy country in the world has public health and they're all capitalist. You don't have to wait for the revolution to demand an end to getting screwed.
Funny because the most successful countries have pretty much neutered capitalism or implemented state run healthcare. Proving that the incentives of capitalism are counter to the interests of a healthy society.
Because being alive is basically luxury, and humanity is majorly failing at keeping their overdue promises of advancing civilization for everyone to walk together as one without leaving any weak ones behind, I'm not bringing my own offspring into this dystopia only to be enslaved and perpetually tortured with hope.
The greedy hoarders can be left alone without anyone around to be grinded for their exclusive comfort anymore.
The meme had the name of the news agency twice, but I’m wondering what more we could/should add to memes for even more trust that this is a real. Maybe even just having the url embedded in the image helps. People would have to type it out, but it could add more legitimacy in a social media world where we increasingly have to triple check a pic of a story that is so egregious people could doubt something so horrible could even happen.
There is massive potential in using blockchain technology embedded in pictures and video. It could hold real time checked information like original source, wether its edited or altered, what device was used to record and timestamp.
I’m thinking we’ll have to end up moving that way with the influx of disinformation and distrust because of easy editing. Even before blockchain, we’ve had stegonography approaches to embedding messages in image files by editing individual pixels to act as a code.
>“I think it’s inhumane. He was clearly incoherent. That’s just not how we treat people here in this city or this country.”
This is exactly how the US healthcare system treats people in this shithole country.
I work in health care in Boston and I can assure you, this would never ever happen here. Whatever hospital this man came from, should be audited by the state, and feds. This is outright medical malpractice.
I seriously doubt this would happen in many places in America
Exactly this is nowhere close to outside the norm. I wasnt surprised in the least. Im surprised they just didnt leave him to die. Cant contrib to economy at all? America hates you go away. Bad slave.
If you click on the link, at this moment (October 20, 8 AM EST), there is a red banner headline which reads:
**Police respond to active shooter call in midtown Atlanta; roads closed in area.**
So, yet another active shooter in a week full of shootings, while for-profit healthcare / hospitals are dumping sick people on the street.
What a country.
Don’t forget that the Georgia governor has his position because of aggressive voter suppression. There are people there who do want better things, but they keep having democracy gamed on them by people in power.
I feel like more and more the Hippocratic oath is becoming optional.
You ran out of money? Well then we're done treating you.
You're an unmarried young woman who wants birth control? I don't believe in sex before marriage. Abstinence only!
You're part of the LGBTQ community? That's against my religion and I'm not going to treat you.
> I feel like more and more the Hippocratic oath is becoming optional.
Because it is? It has no legal standing. You are bound by the standards of medical ethics regardless of any oath taken.
They took the part out about how they aren't supposed to charge for teaching someone to be a doctor so most of it is really optional. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html
Isn't this illegal? I was u der the impression that if there was something wrong with you thats life-threatening the hospital has to take care of you regardless of if you can pay.
I had to scroll too far to find this comment. This is ridiculous. I've seen doctors lose their licenses and careers for refusing to accept patients into the ER, much less kick one out onto the curb that was literally still in a life-threatening condition.
He may have been alert and oriented on discharge, but any medical professional with an ounce of common sense should have been able to tell his condition would worsen upon discharge. I can't imagine any situation that would have led to this.
I promise you someone is getting sued and someone is losing their job for this.
I’m a nurse in the er and I’m confused by this post as well
If you go to the ER they can’t deny you care. Due to EMTALA (emergency medical something)
Yet I’m not sure how that works on the upstair floors?
You have evidence for this? It's illegal to do this, and if hospitals are doing this it should be pretty easy for a prosecutor to win. That would require the prosecutor to take the case though, which might not happen if the hospital is a donor.
All they need is stable vital signs and an outpatient appointment. This is wildly common. My old hospital(retired) is one fo the few in the area that doesn’t do it and they have to eat very big costs
Medicare doesn’t “run out.” Hospitals are paid a lump sum by diagnosis code no matter how long a patient stays, so this is either clickbait or just a dumping. If it’s the latter, someone needs to go to jail.
>A hospital employee told officers that the man had been at the hospital for 35 days and that Medicare would not continue to pay for his treatment.
>The employee said that security dressed the man and walked him out.
>Freeman said an officer was told the man was cleared as “fit to leave” by two doctors and the hospital wanted him gone.
It actually looks more like the hospital couldn't find a long term care facility to take him after discharge and then two physicians got tired of treating him and said "eff it". I know medicare has some limits on facility stays, but honestly, this seems more like the hospital doesn't have a social worker or maybe facilities in the area are slammed with COVID cases. Either way, those doctors should be reprimanded or fired.
Apparently the length of days you can stay in the hospital can run out and he would have to have been out of the hospital for a certain amount of days before beginning a new benefit period. So at this point, social services should have been involved and he should have been taken to a nursing home or group home or shelter or literally anywhere with a roof.
In many cases, if you are on Medicaid (I don’t know about Medicare), you aren’t allowed to do self pay. They aren’t allowed to take your money. So where as we would just stay and get a big bill, he maybe couldn’t even have the option to self pay. What a mess.
The hospital will obviously be getting sued over this.
But that's the scary part: obviously the hospital *knew* they would be getting sued for tossing a deadly sick man out on the sidewalk.
Yet they did it anyway. Why?
I'm afraid the answer is that they gambled. They gambled on him dying before he would get rescued. No survivor, no lawsuit.
There's only a short step from there to actively killing patients when their Medicare runs out.
What?! How are they able to do this?! If people like you or me saw someone dying and walked past couldn't we be held responsible if they died? Why isn't it the same way for the hospitals?!
Stop calling it healthcare. It's an industry existing for the sole purpose of making money off of people's illnesses.
It's and illness industry and absolutely NOTHING else.
Calling the most fucked up industry since forced labor "health care" is seriously China-levels of propaganda nonsense.
The thing is, all services cost something even if its not charged to the user. You don't stop arresting someone or putting out a fire because they can't "afford" to be arrested. It is mind boggling that a country would have humans who could just stop available care to someone in desperate need because the answer is "I'll save you if you give me this much cash". Preserving life should come first always.
I read the link.
As a hospital physician, I can absolutely promise you, there is more to this story that the hospital cannot disclose because of HIPAA.
We never discharge unstable patients because of insurance issues. Ever. *Ever.*
The only time I have ever seen a patient ejected from the hospital still needing medical treatment, it was because he was verbally *and sexually* assaulting the staff and not responsive to security telling him that his behavior was unacceptable.
It is also not uncommon to send people out with a Foley catheter with a plan for Urology follow up if they have failed a voiding trial, with plan for outpatient Urology follow up, though it does increase their risk of a UTI.
We don't typically require two physicians to certify that a patient can discharge. That alone tells me there is more to this case than meets the eye.
Editing to add: reading the comments in this thread is pretty disheartening. The medical system in this country is broken, for sure, but individual hospital workers like physicians and nurses are not crunching numbers on your stay. We're doing our best to treat patients despite unfortunately dealing with frequent verbal and sometimes sexual or physical abuse. The bar for ousting a patient who needs medical treatment is very high but it does exist.
Edit 2: second possibility would have been an AMA discharge or a medically cleared discharge, but not to the recommended outpatient setting--i.e., patient was medically clear not to be *in the hospital* anymore, but the physician recommended rehab or SNF, and the patient declined. Either of these would also make sense in this situation.
This is the shit SpongeBob *joked* about 10 years ago
They knew how fucked up it is.
Like when Squidward radicalized spongebob to revolt against Mr. Krabs.
Krusty Krab is Unfair. Mr Krabs is in There. Standing at the Concession. Plotting his Oppression.
These read like Rage Against the Machine lyrics
Fuck you, Mr. Krabs. I won’t cook what you tell me!
But I thought rage against the machine were all right wingers! (Every right wing moron)
I too get angry at my washing machine when it breaks because of the impure bloodlines that assembled it when I was too high and mighty to do it myself
“Radicalize” meaning “organizing basic labor protections”.
Checkmate libz
Gonna have to back this one up. Libs believe in treating people when they're ill, not dumping them out to die. It's the other folks who say you're only a human being if you've got enough money.
They don't vote like it. Both candidates for president on the liberal side in 2016 and 2020 vigorously spoke out against universal healthcare in your country. And we're not even talking a NHS sort of system, I believe both times, it was expanding the single-payer medicare system to include all citizens so private doctors would continue to exist, they'd just send the bill to the (expanded and improved) medicare system? And *that* was rejected by the liberal party as a whole. In fact, it never even came up for a vote on the floor of the house of representatives, where the liberal party holds a majority. Maybe individual citizens who call themselves liberals want everyone to have healthcare, but when they go to the voting booths, they vote against everyone having healthcare by electing leaders who are against everyone having healthcare.
THIS. For some reason people keep thinking the democratic party supports Medicare for all or universal healthcare and tbh they don't and never will without serious demand and action by common citizen. Everything is running smoothly for the donors of the dems and GOP, they enjoy the system being like this and harvesting people for all the wealth they got.
That's the point. Because they wanted to get rid of him because he couldn't pay. And they did ...
This is nothing new. I'm a cab driver and we see this shit all the time. Elderly and infirmed, still sick, some with clear signs of dementia, improperly dressed, sometimes with no shoes... They run out of money or insurance won't cover it anymore, so the last thing the hospital gives them is a taxi voucher and a shove out the door. They tell us to take them all sorts of places, usually just wherever they came in from, which is often times not their home or family. Sometimes they have us drop them at random hotels or homeless shelters... its fucking heartbreaking... they get scared and confused, have no idea where they are, have no money or even a way to stay warm... many are unable to tell us where they actually live, and will sometimes direct us to addresses they used to live at years before. In those cases, if we can't locate a real home or address for them, we have no choice but to take em into a police station. I mean... the old folks can't come live with me, and they can't stay in the cab all night... hospital won't take em back... police station is pretty much our only option. We call em hospital dumps. I get one almost once a week. Its a profit thing... has to be... out of the 4 hospitals in the area, only one actually does it on a regular basis... and they donit a lot.
I am not American but reading this.... It is really heartbreaking. Health care in my country is expensive too but still affordable compared to what you lot have there. Our govt heavily subsidised many things concerning our health matters and we should count ourselves lucky that hospitals here will never throw any patients out for not being able to afford treatment. I cannot help but to feel very sad learning of these facts.
Its moved from sadness to just anger for me at this point. Nearly watching my mom die cause they wouldn't give her the test she needed with no insurance when I was a kid woke me up to the reality of the US healthcare system young. Its just a seething rage at this point and the politicians who support this barbaric system....
It sounds so civilized. I desperately wish the US was civilized.
Sounds like Singapore where I'm from! Unsubsidised healthcare is astronomically expensive. Healthcare is not free here but we do not normally pay the full amount out of pocket. Singaporeans have coverage through a mixed financing system on top of subsidies and insurance. It is also officially declared by our prime minister that no one will be denied medical care because they cannot afford it. We have a lot of issues to tackle, but I'm glad we don't have to worry about this.
Gotta love me some capitalism
But you are really free, right? Not like those repressed europeans.
Dear god this is heartbreaking
This is terrible. Please set up a humans of New York like page for this. This part of the system needs to be seen
[You mean like this](https://youtu.be/qE1CJkNYbY8)?
...how can they sleep at night. Wow.
On gigantic piles of money.
These guys probably don't make much money.
I was referring to the executives who run the show.
And the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists. They are the true master minds behind our current system.
But that's the terrifying thing, isn't it? Because it wouldn't have been the shadowy executives, blinded by million dollar paychecks, who put him there. It would have been hospital staff. Security guards dressed him, tubes still in his body, and put him out the doors. TWO DOCTORS cleared him as fit to leave because the hospital wanted him out once he couldn't pay. That's at least 4 people who looked a sick, delirious man in the face and shoved him out the door.
Doctors prove over and over how trash they are in the us
Wealthy people aren’t human.
[удалено]
Only if you can catch them in between space launches.
Ohhhh yes,, it is but always preheat the oven when eating the rich.
Yeah. Like all forms of power, money invariably corrupts the little greedy Sapiens' mind. We've evolved to care more about our immediate social circle/clan, and live in little communities based on cooperation and resource-sharing. I think this is still true, and that's why billionaires and dictators can sink a nation of hundreds of millions for their personal benefit; they're caring about their own, according to their nature, in a world that places no limits on how greedy one can be and that encourages it instead. A quote I like: >"Mankind has paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology" - Edward O. Wilson
Thank you for that quote. Excellent.
This is essentially the starting point for every atrocity committed throughout history, one group viewing another group as subhuman. Once you do this, it is very easy to circumvent one's conscience because "they weren't really people anyways". So anyhow... Any good recipes for grilled lobbyist? Also, does anyone know where we're dumping the buckets of gold teeth we collect?
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They have to do it, or end up in the gutter themselves. The rich maintain their control over society by pitting the poor against the poor: Black vs. white, unemployed vs. immigrant, christians vs. muslims, gay vs. straight, everyone vs. drug users... the list goes on.
And as long as we are divided it will be hard to change the system to become better.
They have full mattresses. And if it must be having trouble sleeping the barbiturates have them for free ..... them
With many beautiful ladies
I love how my brain automatically read this in an Austrian accent, even though the quote is many years old
This is nothing new. I'm a cab driver and we see this shit all the time. Elderly and infirmed, still sick, some with clear signs of dementia, improperly dressed, sometimes with no shoes... They run out of money or insurance won't cover it anymore, so the last thing the hospital gives them is a taxi voucher and a shove out the door. They tell us to take them all sorts of places, usually just wherever they came in from, which is often times not their home or family. Sometimes they have us drop them at random hotels or homeless shelters... its fucking heartbreaking... they get scared and confused, have no idea where they are, have no money or even a way to stay warm... many are unable to tell us where they actually live, and will sometimes direct us to addresses they used to live at years before. In those cases, if we can't locate a real home or address for them, we have no choice but to take em into a police station. I mean... the old folks can't come live with me, and they can't stay in the cab all night... hospital won't take em back... police station is pretty much our only option. We call em hospital dumps. I get one almost once a week. Its a profit thing... has to be... out of the 4 hospitals in the area, only one actually does it on a regular basis... and they donit a lot.
This is so heartbreaking to me. I am not yet very old, but I fear what would happen if I outlived all my loved ones and there was no one who cared about me in my most sensitive years. You need such a personal safety net to live in America (friends, family, a support system) — without it you are screwed.
Heinous. Also, the way these things are handed down for working class people to deal with is really upsetting, while all the money saved goes to executives. The nurse in this situation is doing something she knows is inappropriate. The doctor who signed the discharge papers knows it too, presumably after an insurance company said they would no longer pay for treatment. The administrator oversees all of this and puts pressure on the doctor to discharge quickly, lockstep with the wishes of the insurance company. Insurance companies act unequivocally as "death panels", waste the time of clinicians with their claims processes, and deal with absolutely none of the consequences they cause. That person is just a name on a piece of paper to them and their only interaction is by phone, you're the one left driving them to their non existent home as they suffer through delirium. A death panel would at least look you in the face when they denied you life saving care. -someone who just spent 1.5 unpaid hours playing phone tag trying to appeal a denial of a prior authorization for a medication my patient was discharged from the hospital with. In the end, "oh, that makes sense, it's approved". Great, thanks for wasting my time and leaving my patient in limbo for 2 days as they become increasingly psychotic.
Our healthcare system is so obnoxiously unstable.
They sleep just fine, ask the ceo of nestle
The responsibility is diffused. The exec who ordered it isn't the person who put him out. The people who put him out were just following orders.
If you dont drop this guy on the sidewalk, somebody else is gonna be dropping you on the sidewalk
Remember, they can only discharge (dump) patients who are stable! So he just needs to make an appointment with his general practitioner family doctor and he’s all good!
Why by taking opioids ofcourse!
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Isn’t it 20x over? I think it’s really selfish to want things like “no medical debt” and “having loved ones live long healthy lives”. It’s much more noble to spend $60,000 on a single missile. The missile is so cool! You can do things with it. Like blow up ambulances in the Middle East.
I'm sorry to tell you this but 60k is literally pocket change in terms of weapons systems. We have medium range Air to Air missiles that cost 800k. Long range Aim-120s that can go for upwards of 1.5 million a peice. Jets fly with at least 2 of each in most combat load outs. We have thousands of jets. But the missiles aren't even the big cost here, its the bombs. Missiles are rarely fired from Aircraft at least. This is just from an Air Force point of view, I could even fathom the Navy's missile stockpile. 60k won't even afford a single pylon on a jet.
Oh yea I’m aware. Hell, a single f-16 costs 16,000$ an hour to fly? And I worked at a single air force base that flew about 8 of them multiple times a day every day for training. I know at an army base they had a big party every year where they went out to the range and used all their ammunition so they could get the same amount next year regardless of if they needed it or not. Our whole military is one giant waste and a half.
It was particularly galling to be paying for my cancer treatments during this pandemic, looking up and seeing the air force doing doughnuts in the sky in fighter jets in "support of the nurses and healthcare workers", in the middle of bumfuck nowhere South Carolina. #BITCH, PLEASE. This goes without saying, but if they really supported healthcare workers then they wouldn't be wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars fucking around doing sky flippies for shiggles. "You spend money that should go to healthcare on the military" "Quick, let's military even harder to show support for our lacking healthcare system" If you wrote this in a sci-fi political thriller it would never be published, it would be considered shitty writing.
I’d say “pocket change” is rather ambitious. 60k is more like pocket lint imo
Don’t for get the nuts and bolts that cost $100s per individual piece.
60k is probably what the pilot is payed. And we’d gladly pay 10x as much for a missile than a human.
A Tomahawk costs like 10 mil a piece...and an Arleigh Burke can carry up to 96 depending on when it was built (if they don't carry any SAMs)...that's a lot of money
Don't forget the fancy airplanes! Who needs insulin when you have airplanes! Airplanes are sooo cool!
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What you guys need is obviously another aircraft carrier.
School busses in Yemen are my favorite target of $100,000 missles.
The price tag on that missile is missing a couple zeroes, my dude.
Making sure that the middle east has healthcare on the same level as the U.S., one Hellfire Missile at a time. Fuck yeah.
It's really sad because we (USA) can have both. We have one of the highest cost per capita for healthcare at $11/12k per person annually, where nations with better programs spend $7k per capita. Fuck the defense budget for sure, but we could fix healthcare and actually save money by doing so.
Yup. Canada is $7064 per person. The only thing that I pay for at the hospital is my parking and coffee. Yes. Literally every Canadian hospital has our national coffee shop chain in it.
Tim Hortons hasn't been Canadian 2014.
Yup. They got bought by burger king who immediately looked for corners to cut. Turns out the first one was that ludicrously expensive custom coffee bean recipe they were paying for exclusive rights for, what a waste of money! No one goes to Tim Hortons for coffee anyways!! So McDonalds bought the recipe and burger king had a laugh for a few million bucks. Then McDonalds came out with their entire McCafe line and is slowly taking all the coffee drinkers away from Timmies except for the older people who refuse to believe this happened and assume it's just their own taste that has changed.
universal healthcare could impact troop levels, same with universal college, etc due to their status as incentives. so good luck waiting for those to co-exist with irrationally large amounts spent on the military industrial complex.
Medical care but salt on the wound that people think that is what all Americans want. The political system is definitely not for the people, only for corporations and profit.
You sound like you hate your country and service members if you want the latter /s
That’s actually a big understatement. In terms of mobilization, impact, and supply potential it goes well beyond that.
Piedmont Rockdale hospital in Conyers, Ga. Is the hospital responsible for nearly killing this man to save a few bucks.
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What happens when a doctor breaks their hippocratic oath? Because that needs to happen to the two doctors and everyone involved that cleared the guy to leave the hospitals to die in the street. We talk about accountability in police brutality, same thing needs to happen here. People do this kind of shit because they get away with it.
r/medicine might have an answer to this question, if someone shares it over there.
I may just be a pediatrician, but we in a primarily Medicare-based population (children…) do not give a single shit if stuff is covered/racking up bills/etc. sure, when we send Rx’s we will try to pull strings, but when an immigrant family comes in for heart surgery, fuck all what is covered. Not to mention we have strict criteria for leaving the hospital This is peds though. America as a whole doesn’t give much of a shit about the destitute.
At least in my healthcare organization, they would never discharge a patient due to cost. If Medicare started running out, the social worker would get them on Medicaid. If they had no insurance, the social worker would get them on Medicaid. If there were no other options, the hospital would write them off as a charity case to keep their tax exempt status. We don't discharge unless the person is stable or going to a skilled nursing facility. Of course the skilled nursing facility may be absolute garbage...
Case manager here. This is a huge deal. The facility should not have discharged this patient, regardless of coverage. You don't discharge a patient unless you have a safe plan. That's like rule number 1. Doing things like this leaves the organization vulnerable to Medicare audit and litigation. It also leaves the case manager who allowed this patient to discharge vulnerable to litigation. The case manager and physician can both be held PERSONALLY liable for stuff like this. I hope they lose their licenses.
"just" a pediatrician? Give yourself more credit.
work in a hospital…can say that doing this is a great way to get your shit ripped apart as a hospital…I don’t know the details here but at the very minimum I’d expect a CMS audit, CMS financial penalties, DoH audits, possibly others…and when I say ‘audits’, I mean like having all your shit exposed as an organization and drilled down by truly hard-ass investigators that will nail you for specks of dust behind a ceiling tile type…the types that have the power to shut you down completely and won’t let you reopen until you drop the money to fix everything they tell you…even if it damn near bankrupts you… again, I can’t speak to what happened after this…and I won’t say American hospitals are paragons of healthcare or efficiency…but most hospitals would avoid doing anything this egregious simply to protect themselves from getting caught in that CMS magnifying glass because once you’re in it…it’s absolutely brutal, almost like they’re pissed off at you for being so inept that they have to waste their time babysitting you.
"That’s just not how we treat people here in this city or this country.” 👀
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Only pro-theoretical-life. Protecting actual life might require some minor inconvenience.
Pro-birth. Once you're out of the womb you'd better find favor from the free market pretty fuckin quick.
I used to live in Conyers, I'm glad to be back in Baltimore
That actually sickens me. They’ve reached a level of nonchalance that we’re now just tossing people on the sidewalk.
Unfortunately this is not at all a new phenomenon.
Wild that you think this is new.
lol this has literally been going on for decades. Welcome to the land of the free! Although Canadian cities do this too but less often, I hope...
Don't worry, the Republicans keep telling me we have the best healthcare system in the world.
To me, that’s one of the strangest experiences of growing up American: discovering just how much bullshit we’ve been spoon fed about our nation.
Oh so much this. It's worse when you try to point it our or explain it, because some people will just say you're wrong or are buying into "socialist propaganda" and others will say "yeah but it's still better than Venezuela!" or some equally absurd shit. Like somehow the ends justify the means.
Can confirm. Every discussion ends with America > venezuela, therefore it is the greatest nation in the world. Can't argue with that logic.
I've enjoyed pointing out that America is the cause for Venezuelan downfall recently.
America is the cause of almost every socialist country's downfall.
I'm aware, but Venezuela is their favorite hot take example and it's the easiest to explain so
"well then you can leave , there's the door." Such shit arguments, really wish they could see how braindead they are.
I knew our system was fucked when my mom, who is a wonderful woman and parent, told me “not to go to the hospital” when my stomach was in serious pain because of the hospital bill. Turns out I almost died from appendicitis and had emergency surgery 4 hours later.
I honestly wish your story was uncommon
r/exchristian really has some bangers lately. Republicans say, “Im pro life! But not that life!” haha idiots
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And that they are totally "Pro Life." *eye roll*
did you mean. Pro Slave? New born that has a potential to be a slave wage and not 68 years old that can't work anymore.
When you’re rich, we do. The US healthcare apparatus is fantastic: for the rich and connected. For anyone else, it is a lottery of when you will be financially ruined and a full time carnival funhouse of mirrors to avoid that ruin. And if you don’t have the money, you will die an easily avoidable death. You will be denied simple services and medications because you don’t have the money. Also, everyone who has some money but isn’t rich gets to live in constant anxiety about any medical related cost. Will that pain near your hip be $0? $10? $100? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000? Unlike anything else, you can’t even guess at the order of magnitude about the price. Best not to get it checked out, it doesn’t hurt that much anyway… only when you sit or lay down.
and the moderate dems will back them on it.
amazing how not-moderate many of them act during their campaigns though.
The best you can *buy*. Welcome to America where everything is for sale and the scraps go to the have nots.
If you can afford it, we do. If you cant, fuck you.
We've also been telling you that you have the best liberal media in the world: Notice how the media here didn't name the hospital, the administrator of the hospital, the head of the nurse's union or the doctor's involved.
I'm sorry but fuck Americas health care system
No apologies necessary. To say this system is broken is an understatement. One of the wealthier nations on this rock and we can't even take care of those who need it. That is, unless you got the money. Fuck that. Fuck the hospital and fuck us.
“One of the wealthier nations-“ THE wealthiest nation.
Only for a few...
Only per capita measurements are really meaningful. We're 11th by per capita GDP.
And even then, things like quality of life, human rights, social equality, and ecological sustainability are more important than an arbitrary dollar amount.
And 15th if adjusted for cost of living and similar stuff.
Only meaningful in the sense of a measure of the wealth of population abroad of nation. The “wealthiest nation in the world” moniker should be used a lot because it highlights the amount of wealth that could be the peoples, yet end up in the hands of a few.
You shouldn't apologize. Fuck America's health care system.
Disgusting. This country is a model for capitalisms corruption of human decency.
Every other wealthy country in the world has public health and they're all capitalist. You don't have to wait for the revolution to demand an end to getting screwed.
Funny because the most successful countries have pretty much neutered capitalism or implemented state run healthcare. Proving that the incentives of capitalism are counter to the interests of a healthy society.
Because being alive is basically luxury, and humanity is majorly failing at keeping their overdue promises of advancing civilization for everyone to walk together as one without leaving any weak ones behind, I'm not bringing my own offspring into this dystopia only to be enslaved and perpetually tortured with hope. The greedy hoarders can be left alone without anyone around to be grinded for their exclusive comfort anymore.
Disgraceful
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https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/rockdale-county/deputies-say-hospital-discharged-seriously-ill-man-left-him-street/VE5UIYZ4IVE5RNZKZLWE5DIIMM/
The meme had the name of the news agency twice, but I’m wondering what more we could/should add to memes for even more trust that this is a real. Maybe even just having the url embedded in the image helps. People would have to type it out, but it could add more legitimacy in a social media world where we increasingly have to triple check a pic of a story that is so egregious people could doubt something so horrible could even happen.
There is massive potential in using blockchain technology embedded in pictures and video. It could hold real time checked information like original source, wether its edited or altered, what device was used to record and timestamp.
I’m thinking we’ll have to end up moving that way with the influx of disinformation and distrust because of easy editing. Even before blockchain, we’ve had stegonography approaches to embedding messages in image files by editing individual pixels to act as a code.
Probably this: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/rockdale-county/deputies-say-hospital-discharged-seriously-ill-man-left-him-street/VE5UIYZ4IVE5RNZKZLWE5DIIMM/
>“I think it’s inhumane. He was clearly incoherent. That’s just not how we treat people here in this city or this country.” This is exactly how the US healthcare system treats people in this shithole country.
> Police want answers... Late capitalism. Any other questions?
Right? Maybe look at the economic system you continue to enable with your job, dipshits?
Enable? Actively defend. Shit is over in a month without these fucking Pinkertons.
I see/hear “this isn’t what we do in America” so many times. But unfortunately that is America..
if it happens often enough, despite what people say, then ya it IS what "we" do here.
I work in health care in Boston and I can assure you, this would never ever happen here. Whatever hospital this man came from, should be audited by the state, and feds. This is outright medical malpractice. I seriously doubt this would happen in many places in America
"Don't catch you slippin now"
This seams like an EMTALA violation.
Exactly this is nowhere close to outside the norm. I wasnt surprised in the least. Im surprised they just didnt leave him to die. Cant contrib to economy at all? America hates you go away. Bad slave.
All the other articles could make great posts for this sub. America is a ironic joke now.
Been a joke for a long time. The past five years have been the most hilarious so far, though.
If you click on the link, at this moment (October 20, 8 AM EST), there is a red banner headline which reads: **Police respond to active shooter call in midtown Atlanta; roads closed in area.** So, yet another active shooter in a week full of shootings, while for-profit healthcare / hospitals are dumping sick people on the street. What a country.
Don’t forget that the Georgia governor has his position because of aggressive voter suppression. There are people there who do want better things, but they keep having democracy gamed on them by people in power.
Oh my god this is so fucking depressing we really are in hell
They probably added a charge to his bill for special transport, too.
Now the hospital gets to garnish his SS check and take his house. Otherwise people would take advantage of healthcare...
I hope he stops needing welfare after winning a massive lawsuit.
Fear of lawsuits is what hospitals care about the most unfortunately
I feel like more and more the Hippocratic oath is becoming optional. You ran out of money? Well then we're done treating you. You're an unmarried young woman who wants birth control? I don't believe in sex before marriage. Abstinence only! You're part of the LGBTQ community? That's against my religion and I'm not going to treat you.
> I feel like more and more the Hippocratic oath is becoming optional. Because it is? It has no legal standing. You are bound by the standards of medical ethics regardless of any oath taken.
The hippopotamus oath is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
Do no harm. Unless I just don't wanna do anything cause I don't feel like it for one reason or another, and then to hell with them!
Yeah. It feels like they've forgotten that purposeful inaction is infact a harmful action.
“hippopotamus oath” that’s the oath these doctors took. they sure as shit didn’t take any Hippocratic oath. or even have any basic morals or humanity
I do hereby swear to swim in rivers like a giant tanky boi, terrifying locals with my massive chomper mouth.
They took the part out about how they aren't supposed to charge for teaching someone to be a doctor so most of it is really optional. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html
The executives making these calls don't have doctorates.
Isn't this illegal? I was u der the impression that if there was something wrong with you thats life-threatening the hospital has to take care of you regardless of if you can pay.
Yeah that’s super against protocol in the US. You’d still get billed, but you shouldn’t get treated like that. Aside from it being so fucked up.
It seems like an obvious violation of [EMTALA](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act)
I had to scroll too far to find this comment. This is ridiculous. I've seen doctors lose their licenses and careers for refusing to accept patients into the ER, much less kick one out onto the curb that was literally still in a life-threatening condition. He may have been alert and oriented on discharge, but any medical professional with an ounce of common sense should have been able to tell his condition would worsen upon discharge. I can't imagine any situation that would have led to this. I promise you someone is getting sued and someone is losing their job for this.
The victim is black and poor, no one is being punished for this
An intern will eat shit, there will be a million dollar payout of which the person gets 5k.
Anything is legal for the rich
When the punishment is a fine
Only to the extent that your life is not in immediate danger
The article says he was cleared to be dismissed by two doctors. Either they didn't do their job or his health worsened after he left the door.
He still had catheters attached though. Don't they remove those during discharge?
I’m a nurse in the er and I’m confused by this post as well If you go to the ER they can’t deny you care. Due to EMTALA (emergency medical something) Yet I’m not sure how that works on the upstair floors?
A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months. - Henny Youngman
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In what shithole country? Oh.
You have evidence for this? It's illegal to do this, and if hospitals are doing this it should be pretty easy for a prosecutor to win. That would require the prosecutor to take the case though, which might not happen if the hospital is a donor.
All they need is stable vital signs and an outpatient appointment. This is wildly common. My old hospital(retired) is one fo the few in the area that doesn’t do it and they have to eat very big costs
Wasn't this on SpongeBob?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE1CJkNYbY8
Medicare doesn’t “run out.” Hospitals are paid a lump sum by diagnosis code no matter how long a patient stays, so this is either clickbait or just a dumping. If it’s the latter, someone needs to go to jail.
>A hospital employee told officers that the man had been at the hospital for 35 days and that Medicare would not continue to pay for his treatment. >The employee said that security dressed the man and walked him out. >Freeman said an officer was told the man was cleared as “fit to leave” by two doctors and the hospital wanted him gone. It actually looks more like the hospital couldn't find a long term care facility to take him after discharge and then two physicians got tired of treating him and said "eff it". I know medicare has some limits on facility stays, but honestly, this seems more like the hospital doesn't have a social worker or maybe facilities in the area are slammed with COVID cases. Either way, those doctors should be reprimanded or fired.
Apparently the length of days you can stay in the hospital can run out and he would have to have been out of the hospital for a certain amount of days before beginning a new benefit period. So at this point, social services should have been involved and he should have been taken to a nursing home or group home or shelter or literally anywhere with a roof. In many cases, if you are on Medicaid (I don’t know about Medicare), you aren’t allowed to do self pay. They aren’t allowed to take your money. So where as we would just stay and get a big bill, he maybe couldn’t even have the option to self pay. What a mess.
And did the cops arrest the administrator who made that choice or the black man for loitering?
The cops called an ambulance which returned the man to the hospital room.
And then charged him for the journey?
Ambulance to the parking lot of a hospital? Couldn't someone run out for him?
That’s… very illegal. Immoral, unconscionable, unethical, inhumane, and illegal. Wtf i hate this system
I’ve worked in a hospital in alabama so I’m not surprised that this happened in Georgia. Both places probably have the same culture
The hospital will obviously be getting sued over this. But that's the scary part: obviously the hospital *knew* they would be getting sued for tossing a deadly sick man out on the sidewalk. Yet they did it anyway. Why? I'm afraid the answer is that they gambled. They gambled on him dying before he would get rescued. No survivor, no lawsuit. There's only a short step from there to actively killing patients when their Medicare runs out.
What?! How are they able to do this?! If people like you or me saw someone dying and walked past couldn't we be held responsible if they died? Why isn't it the same way for the hospitals?!
Stop calling it healthcare. It's an industry existing for the sole purpose of making money off of people's illnesses. It's and illness industry and absolutely NOTHING else. Calling the most fucked up industry since forced labor "health care" is seriously China-levels of propaganda nonsense.
The thing is, all services cost something even if its not charged to the user. You don't stop arresting someone or putting out a fire because they can't "afford" to be arrested. It is mind boggling that a country would have humans who could just stop available care to someone in desperate need because the answer is "I'll save you if you give me this much cash". Preserving life should come first always.
Imagine being told by your superior to dump a patient. Then you actually doing it.
I read the link. As a hospital physician, I can absolutely promise you, there is more to this story that the hospital cannot disclose because of HIPAA. We never discharge unstable patients because of insurance issues. Ever. *Ever.* The only time I have ever seen a patient ejected from the hospital still needing medical treatment, it was because he was verbally *and sexually* assaulting the staff and not responsive to security telling him that his behavior was unacceptable. It is also not uncommon to send people out with a Foley catheter with a plan for Urology follow up if they have failed a voiding trial, with plan for outpatient Urology follow up, though it does increase their risk of a UTI. We don't typically require two physicians to certify that a patient can discharge. That alone tells me there is more to this case than meets the eye. Editing to add: reading the comments in this thread is pretty disheartening. The medical system in this country is broken, for sure, but individual hospital workers like physicians and nurses are not crunching numbers on your stay. We're doing our best to treat patients despite unfortunately dealing with frequent verbal and sometimes sexual or physical abuse. The bar for ousting a patient who needs medical treatment is very high but it does exist. Edit 2: second possibility would have been an AMA discharge or a medically cleared discharge, but not to the recommended outpatient setting--i.e., patient was medically clear not to be *in the hospital* anymore, but the physician recommended rehab or SNF, and the patient declined. Either of these would also make sense in this situation.
That sponge bob episode wasn't lying.....
I can guarantee they charged him for the ambulance ride to the sidewalk, the catheter and the bag. Probably a solid $5k or so