Operative DT writes in:

RE:”if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public” 

Dr. the J, EMTALA has rendered even that unlikely option impossible, hasn’t it? 

In effect, if a doctor wants to keep his soul, he has to quit his job. Pretty cool, eh? 

Best, Operative DT

Dear Operative DT,

Dr. J. is happy to see, unlike Operative JS, you aren’t too busy with the Myrmidons to do your required reading. Gold star for you.

EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, for our readers who are not in the know is the Federal Law passed in 1986 that states that pretty much any hospital has to offer emergent, necessary care for individuals regardless of their citizenship, legal status ability to pay. Dr. J. says virtually because VA hospitals, Indian Health Service hospitals are exempt, because they already serve subsets of the impoverished and it is very difficult to get someone who isn’t a participant in those systems (or employees) to be registered to have care delivered.

Indeed, someone crashed their care in the VA parking lot when Dr. J. was a resident, and we provided CPR until an ambulance could take him across the street to the University Hospital. He wasn’t a Vet, so there was no way we could effectively deliver care for him because he just wasn’t in the system. The nice thing is that VA’s tend to be near other hospitals.

The other big exception is the Shriner’s hospital who because of their limited scope of practice (orthopedics, burns and such) can’t provide care to adults, or individuals with health issues not within their purview.

Regarding the quote from the Douthat article, Dr. J. sold his soul to get in to medical school so it isn’t an issue for him.

The truth is that the actions that the Obama Administration is taking is with the goal to force Catholic (and perhaps other religious) hospitals to shut down. They won’t do what he wants. They won’t provide abortions or access to birth control to patients, and now they have to make a choice regarding employees. Buy health insurance antithetical to their believes or take a financial hit that may force them to close shop. The health insurance issue is not so much on the doctors, but on the hospital administration.

Now Dr. J. is against the HHS rule, not only because of its attack on religious freedom, but also it makes horrible medical economic sense. He wrote about it before. Uncovered services for women (birth control, sterilization, and even abortions), like all uncovered services (OTCs for example) are CHEAP. The costs will only go up if you make them ‘free services covered by insurance.’

Obamacare is onerous in other ways to private for-profit hospitals, that they will struggle as well.

The goal, ultimately, is to force the system to collapse and make the public beg for a ‘single-payer’ system, aka Guv’mint run healthcare.

Dr. J.