The George W. Bush advice, "YOU JUST GO TO AN EMERGENCY ROOM." "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, YOU JUST GO TO AN EMERGENCY ROOM."* --G.W. Bush, Cleveland, 7/10/07 (in a prepared speech) is not so hot if you are trying to have something left to lose. If you go to the emergency room, and/or the the hospital, they will track you down and make you pay. Until and unless you have nothing left to lose. That's the problem, the cluelessness, with the Medicaid- or Emergency-Room-Only safety-net system he is touting in the speech. (And let's not forget that those emergency room costs get cost-shifted to everyone with insurance, making their insurance unaffordable.) Incidentally, the reason that the "just go to the emergency room" idea works at all is that there is a Federal law which requires emergency rooms to treat you in an emergency, whether or not the hospital will be able to recover charges. (I am not sure if the law requires decent treatment, or just that you be "stabilized".) Thus, you see that the current laws, rather than deal with the problem, has an irresponsible cost-shifting to the rest of us just built right in. *Yes, G.W. Bush really said that. Though the Obama administration took down the Bush postings since they went into office, I kept a copy, (right here). The quote is in paragraph 16, the one that starts with "The immediate goal...".

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