Common wisdom is that nobody in this country is supposed to get turned away from necessary life saving treatment due to personal inability to pay.
For acute conditions.
I have been told this by EMTs myself.
Yup. It’s the law. No emergency medical establishment can refuse care for someone currently suffering an acute, life-threatening condition regardless of ability to pay.
See, that’s what they mean when they say “necessary life-saving treatment”.
Where people get this notion it applies to cancer therapies, I don’t know—but nobody in the medical industry has ever actually said that. They wouldn’t; it’s not true. It’s also not what the law says.
So do you think that because he was dying of something that was not rapid-onset, and couldn’t pay for treatment because he had lost his job in the economic crash and the job he was able to find in the meantime didn’t give him enough to cover it, he had only himself to blame?
Edit: I also don’t think it makes much sense to blame people for assuming that when they’re told that they won’t be turned away from treatment for necessary life saving procedures due to inability to pay, that it means what it sounds like it means.
For acute conditions.
Yup. It’s the law. No emergency medical establishment can refuse care for someone currently suffering an acute, life-threatening condition regardless of ability to pay.
See, that’s what they mean when they say “necessary life-saving treatment”.
Where people get this notion it applies to cancer therapies, I don’t know—but nobody in the medical industry has ever actually said that. They wouldn’t; it’s not true. It’s also not what the law says.
So do you think that because he was dying of something that was not rapid-onset, and couldn’t pay for treatment because he had lost his job in the economic crash and the job he was able to find in the meantime didn’t give him enough to cover it, he had only himself to blame?
Edit: I also don’t think it makes much sense to blame people for assuming that when they’re told that they won’t be turned away from treatment for necessary life saving procedures due to inability to pay, that it means what it sounds like it means.