Too broke for the ER, patients flee early

[Soylent Brice]

Of more than 119 million visits to U.S. emergency departments each year, about 1.5 million end with patients leaving against medical advice, often because they're worried about costs, doctors say.

By JoNel Aleccia
Health writer
msnbc.com
updated 9:12 a.m. ET, Mon., May 11, 2009

In hindsight, maybe Jesse Ashlock shouldn’t have walked out of the New York emergency room last summer, only a couple hours after being knocked unconscious in a Brooklyn bicycle crash.

Medical crews told him he needed a blood test, chest X-rays and probably a CT scan to check for head injuries. And he certainly should have had treatment for major road rash, including raw scrapes on his face, neck and hands.

But the 31-year-old editor for a design magazine was between jobs, briefly without health insurance and afraid of being stuck with a sky-high hospital bill. The doctor on duty dismissed Ashlock’s questions about cost, telling him she was “a physician, not an accountant,” he said.

more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30628634/

[kpominville]

1. This is the root of our problem

Even people with good jobs and employer sponsored insurance can't afford to get sick.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. You have no idea how many times I faced this

for god sakes, we at times transported American Patients to the US Hospital as our ambulance didn't run an arm and a leg... in fact it did not run either arm or leg.

We need single payer and to take profit out of health care, PERIOD

[mikelgb]

3. I really HATE when caregivers give that bullshit line

about them being completely ignorant of the costs of the procedures they preform.

no math classes in med school?

surely you are not just recommending the more expensive procedure by chance...

[TwilightGardener]

4. I had no idea how much anything cost as a nurse--not equipment, not my services, not

treatments, not dressings, not meds, nothing. I had enough to keep straight in my brain.

[RadiationTherapy]

5. My brother did this when he had his feeding tube inserted.

The amount of pills, procedures, and liquid food they were pumping into him was too much.