Healthcare Reform Megathread: Can I sell my organs to pay this hospital bill?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Healthcare Reform Megathread: Can I sell my organs to pay this hospital bill?

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

blackguy32 posted:

I feel real bad for the emergency rooms around the country because they are going to bear the brunt of this.

Another aspect that you'll start seeing, and in some ways I think we might already have started, is that you're going to struggle to place patients in rehab facilities. So, hypothetically, someone comes into the ER with what is obviously early massive sepsis. So they get admitted to the ICU, go through a long, very costly treatment, end up trached/PEG'd because they're a failure-to-wean patient, and then...what? You've got them stabilized, but they're vent dependent and on tube feeds. They need to go to either a skilled nursing facility or a long-term acute-care facility, but those places are private with no obligation to treat like hospitals. So they'll refuse to take anyone who doesn't have insurance to cover the costs (like ones with a cap that have already been hit because sepsis is loving expensive), so the hospital is now stuck with the cost of trying to care for and wean a patient, in an ICU, that's going to have a long course of treatment because they can't discharge a patient either.

So, in short, you'll see patients who have no business remaining in an ICU taking up a very expensive bed, slowing the flow of people through the ICU and greatly increasing the burden on the hospital. Or, since early sepsis can be deceptive, you'll see hospitals starting to quietly turn people away. Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement is also one of the major ways the government can force hospitals to comply with standards of care. If those programs are significantly weakened, you lose a lot of that leverage which has done a lot of good. There are going to be a ton of knock-on effects here.

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Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

This is already a constant issue due to low Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Oh trust me, I know. I've got a patient who we've had for so long that we decannulated him in the ICU. I'm just saying its going to get worse and you'll lose the pretty potent cudgel that is CMS reimbursement criteria.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 03:28

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Arrgytehpirate posted:

I need amoxicillin if that helps with a recommendation.

Based on what

# ¿ Aug 29, 2018 23:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Healthcare Reform Megathread: Can I sell my organs to pay this hospital bill?