Quote:If you are talking about EMTALA, it is only for emergency care, and is a trivial part of our health care costs. 

My personal experience disagrees with this. When someone comes in with a condition that they let get way out of control cause they didn't have insurance they tend to have the longest stays and linger the most. Their care won't be 'emergent' anymore, but they still stay for months demanding treatment. I had a patient who the CEO had to come down and beg to get d/ced to rehab after he stayed for months with no insurance. Guy knew he wasn't gonna followup and just kept throwing all his care on the hospital. He would just refuse discharge and the hospital wouldn't make him leave. Still don't understand why not, I guess they didn't want to look 'bad.'

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