"Being without health insurance is no big deal," notes Paul Krugman wryly. "Just ask President Bush. 'I mean, people have access to health care in America,' he said last week. 'After all, you just go to an emergency room.'" This, he adds, is the rationale that supposedly undergirds his decision to deny SCHIP to all uninsured children.
This is what you might call callousness with consequences. The White House has announced that Mr. Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend health insurance, and with it such essentials as regular checkups and preventive medical care, to an estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured children. After all, it’s not as if those kids really need insurance — they can just go to emergency rooms, right?
No, see, in France, if you don't pay for health care you can "just" go to the emergency room...because in France people without private insurance are covered by the government! In the United States you can go to the emergency room, but there's nothing "just" about it. When it's done, if you're unlucky enough to require anything more substantial than a toenail removal, and if you don't retroactively qualify for Medicaid, you may well be saddled with enormous debts and ruined credit. What George Bush probably meant to say was, "after all, you just go to an emergency room and fork over extraordinary amounts of money for services rendered, and then pay additional out of pocket expenses for your prescriptions when you're all done at the hospital. If you can't afford it, you're screwed. Sorry." Slip of the tongue.
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