Public and private hospitals alike are prohibited by law from denying a patient care in an <b>emergency</b>. The <b>Emergency</b> Medical and <b>Treatment</b> Labor Act (EMTLA) passed by Congress in 1986 explicitly forbids the denial of care to indigent or uninsured patients based on a lack of ability to pay.

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. 

 

The ER is hardly ideal if the issue is some kind of chronic condition, but the Obamacare policy with the deductible isn't going to help with that at all either. For all the money that's been spent on this and the lack of actual healthcare being delivered, you would have been better off just setting up charity clinics for all the chronic stuff and having catastrophic plans for the uninsurable The way that they did this was kind of a pyramid scheme where they try to force the young and healthy into paying for those that are not. It did very little to confront rising costs for the healthcare so those people just took the penalty for not buying it.

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