Moses v. Providence Hospital: The Sixth Circuit Dumps the Federal Regulations of the Patient Anti-Dumping Statute

摘要

The cost of treating medical patients has grown rapidly during the lastfifty years, with the United States currentl' having, per capita, the mostexpensive healthcare system in the world. During the middle to latetwentieth century, many hospitals focused on a patient's ability to pay fortreatment rather than the patient's actual medical condition; in many cases,meeting a proof-of-payment burden was the initial hurdle to be seen by aphysician.3 Hospitals routinely turned away patients who complained ofacute medical issues if those patients did not demonstrate their ability to pay.4 Even in recent cases, hospital emergency rooms hired taxicabs todrive untreated patients to other hospitals (usually public ones), or had thedriver simply desert the ill patient in impoverished areas. This act ofturning away patients complaining of emergency medical ailments due totheir inability to pay has become known as "patient dumping." 6 The term"patient dumping" can refer to a wide range of acts: a hospital's outrightrefusal to provide necessary emergency medical care; a hospital'sunwillingness to provide sufficient and stabilizing medical care beforearranging to transport the individual to another facility; or, perhaps the mostshocking, a hospital's solicitation of drivers to abandon patients on the sideof the road. 7