Letters: If treatment mandated, someone must pay for it

Posted: January 04, 2011

I don't think the new health-care law is a panacea, but let's get our facts straight ("It is a government takeover," Wednesday). In 1986, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor law, which requires hospitals to admit all who arrive at the emergency room and treat them without regard for their ability to pay.

In essence, we had federally mandated national health care - signed into law under a Republican administration. What we did not have is a rational way to pay for the mandated health care.

Those who seek to repeal the federally mandated insurance requirements in the health-care law should also seek to repeal EMTAL, a deeply immoral proposition if I ever heard one. Or perhaps those who want to repeal health-care reform should force all the uninsured to sign ironclad waivers of any treatment whatsoever at any medical facility unless they can demonstrate the capacity to pay in full and on time. Then, if they can't pay, throw them out on the street, right?

Republicans can't have it both ways. You can't force hospitals to treat everyone and yet not force everyone to pay. Making the insured pay for those who are not insured - which is what we do now - is almost as unfair as denying treatment to those who cannot demonstrate the capacity to pay.

T. W. Cunningham

Lower Gwynedd

twc151home@yahoo.com

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