"History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance."
No. That is not "history". This is a recent phenomenon. This sort of thing was not generally occurring 30 years ago.
Affordability was quite different 30 years ago, perhaps that's why this is a relatively recent phenomenon. It doesn't really matter what the situation was 30 years ago though, because the trend over the past decade has been that uninsured people go to the emergency room when they're very ill.
I assume they didn't lay down and die at home 30 years ago either.
"the trend over the past decade has been that uninsured people go to the emergency room when they're very ill."
I really don't understand that. I was unemployed for a few months last fall when I went to go take care of a friend who was dying of cancer, and during this time I got a really terrible case of giardia from drinking poorly purified tap water (the US is rapidly becoming a third world country). I went to a local medical clinic and got to see a doctor the same day, for about a half hour and it cost me $35. Heck, I even offered to pay the actual cost of $55 but they insisted i pay the lower rate because I was unemployed (I think they get some extra kickback from the local government if they report unemployed people coming in). The wait was relatively short and I got a scrip for a drug that worked. The clinic really did a good job of taking care of low income individuals at very reasonable cost.
I'm really not certain why there is such a need to go to emergency rooms when there are great places like this. Are people just misinformed about their options, or are places like this few and far between? I don't know.
No, they went to emergency rooms, and got pro bono care. It wasn't even charged to someone else's account! Or they worked out simple payment plans directly with the hospital.
Do you genuinely believe that pro bono care comes at no cost? That the doctors and nurses opt not to get paid for the time that they deal with people who don't have insurance? That the electricity company doesn't charge to keep the lights on when there are uninsured people being cared for? That the landlord says "eh, 20% of your patients didn't have insurance, how about a reduction in your rent this month"?
Simple payment plans don't really work out when an emergency visit to the hospital can easily cost more than $100,000.
of course I don't believe that. The question is how best to handle that cost? Through voluntary action or through an inefficient behemoth of a bureaucracy. I'm going to get overtly political here, but I have to say: I cannot honestly believe that a country that fails to successfully take care of osama bin laden without slaughtering millions of innocents along the way, has any hope of managing something as delicate as individual healthcare needs for 300 million.
No. That is not "history". This is a recent phenomenon. This sort of thing was not generally occurring 30 years ago.