ER Overrun By The Insured

Reuters reported on a study finding out who is going to the Emergency Rooms around the country.

"The mistaken belief that emergency departments are overcrowded by a small, disenfranchised portion of the U.S. population can lead to misguided policy decisions and a perception by hospital administrators that emergency patients are not as valuable to the institution as patients having elective surgery," Weber said in a statement.

The fact is, roughly 85% of the US is insured at any given time and that number is very likely to be much higher (see this post). We just don't have this health care crisis that Kerry wants us all to think we have. Our ERs are not getting overrun by the uninsured. The vast majority of the people do have insurance and many of the uninsured aren't even under the poverty line. They're young people and others that just, simply, choose to pay medical costs out of pocket instead, after all, that still is an option in our free market economy. We have a problem with run-away premiums but that can be better handled through tort reforms than creating a nationalized option.