Go figure. . . Some state legislatures are now gearing up to ban governmental mandatory health insurance mandates. This will do nothing to curb the costs to hospitals for treating the uninsured. Case in point: I had a 62 year old woman present to me after falling at home on the ice. It had been several weeks since the fall and the pain in her arm had not lessened. She had delayed in coming in because she  had lost her insurance when her husband had lost his job. My visit with her went well beyond the 15 minute slot making ‘phone calls to the hospital to try and get her free care so she could get the xray she needed.

Or  how about the man who came in to see me because of low back pain but  his blood pressure reading was so high that the back pain quickly became less important to me. He revealed that he too had lost his insurance and couldn’t afford to pay for his blood pressure medications which he had been without for over a year. He needed to be hospitalized.

I spent almost an hour with him – good practice and an ethical obligation dictated that he get a full work-up in the office complete with an EKG and that I try to arrange other services for him as well as medications. When he walked out of the office with a meager supply of blood pressure meds, I knew I wouldn’t see him again. He was a stroke waiting to happen and when he’s hospitalized because of it, the cost burden of paying for a castastrophic event will far outstrip the cost of insurance payments.

When politicians actively work against health care reform I can assure them that the EDs will only become super saturated with uninsured people who seek care for uncontrolled chronic illnesses like diabetes and high blood pressure.

Pretending that we can continue doing what we’re doing without reform will only bankrupt the system. It panders to the uninformed view that mandating health insurance is somehow politically undemocratic and financially irresponsible.

Get real – the more uninsured people  the hospitals see and I see in my practice who can’t afford their medications or regular check-ups, hurts all of us.