Reform EMTALA

The America First Movement will reform the Emergency Medical Treatment Labor Act.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act or EMTALA is a federal law that requires medical personnel to stabilize and treat people who are going to an emergency department, regardless of their ability to pay up or their insurance status.

This clause was developed during a time when many doctors and establishments would refuse to treat patients out of their inability to pay up or insufficient insurance or the expectation of high costs for the medical establishment.

This clause in the EMTALA fails to properly define the status of individuals who need to be stabilized which results in doctors and medical establishments being forced out of the business as a result of heinous fees.

These heinous fees have also caused medical personnel and establishments to send patients to the emergency room, regardless of the injury or circumstance, be it a paper cut or a pregnancy.

This issue is worsened in consideration of the fact that the EMTALA adds several unnecessary liabilities which read as follows, “Physicians—including on-call physicians—who violate EMTALA may be subject to a $50,000 civil penalty. Hospitals that violate EMTALA are subject to civil penalties of $25,000 to $50,000 per violation, lawsuits for damages, and/or exclusion from Medicare” (Kim Stanger in Holland & Hart article “Avoiding EMTALA Penalties”.

The punishments covered in the EMTALA regarding the status of doctors and medical establishments should be removed as these punishments are unnecessary with the exception of the complaint fees that will be reduced to 2 thousand dollars with its scope and quantity being massively reduced.

In wake of this unreasonability, The America First Movement will remove all of these punishments with the exception of the complaint fees with the price of this fee being reduced to 2000 dollars and the scope of these complaints being massively reduced. The America First Movement should support this policy, as it supports the health and wellbeing of American families and medical establishments.

A better solution would be to simply offer more specific definitions. I disagree with the idea of removing penalties for genuine cases where doctors turned away an emergency case. THIS PROBLEM STILL HAPPENS TODAY, and it’s the one of the few safeguards we have to ensure more pregnant women aren’t killed as a result.

I actually suggested a policy that relates to this issue, but as it relates to the perspective of the female patient. Would you please read it over?

I wrote these policies several years ago so there’s bound to errors but your approach works.

There does need to be some sort of reform to EMTALA. As a nurse that has spent many years working in the ER the patient load would be reduced drastically if we could turn away patients that are not true emergencies. I have had a patient come to the ER 4 or 5 days a week just to get pain meds for “leg pain.” I have had a patient come into the ER 4 times during my 12 hr shift by ambulance for non emergent issues. When people use the ER for primary care or use an ER when they should have gone to an urgent/quick care. The patients using the ER for non emergent things is why we have people dying in the lobby because we don’t have beds to put emergencies in to be treated.

I do think that patient should not be turned away for race, age, gender, or pregnancy like they used to be thus the reason for EMTALA but the way it is written makes it available for people to abuse the system.