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 last fifty years,1 with the United States currently having, per capita, the most expensive healthcare system in the world. During the middle to late twentieth century, many hospitals focused on a patient's ability to pay for treatment 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 a physician.3 Hospitals routinely turned away patients who complained of acute medical issues if those patients did not demonstrate their ability topay.4 Even in recent cases, hospital emergency rooms hired taxicabs to drive untreated patients to other hospitals (usually public ones), or had the driver simply desert the ill patient in impoverished areas.5 This act of turning away patients complaining of emergency medical ailments due to their 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 outright refusal to provide necessary emergency medical care; a hospital's unwillingness to provide sufficient and stabilizing medical care before arranging to transport the individual to another facility; or, perhaps the most shocking, a hospital's solicitation of drivers to abandon patients on the side of the road.