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Medical Debt Is Killing Our Patients

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— Here’s my legislative solution to put an end to this

by Arvind Venkat, MD

As an emergency medicine resident in the early 2000s, I cared for a patient in her early 60s with back pain. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), approximately 16% of emergency department patients were uninsured. Often their issues were of low acuity, again because they had no other place to see a physician. I assumed that to be the case with this patient, that I would treat her presumably musculoskeletal back pain, and discharge her. However, while treating her, I noticed she struggled to walk and clutched her gown across her chest. It was the clutching that really struck me as unusual. Read more in MedPage Today.

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Medical Debt Makes the Sick Sicker

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— Better and broader insurance coverage is essential

Most physicians have sworn an oath to “abstain from whatever is deleterious” to our patients. Yet our medical institutions harm patients daily. They dun them for medical bills they can’t afford, often leaving them unable to pay their rent or mortgage, or buy enough to eat.

That accusation isn’t hyperbole, it’s a finding from our analysis — published this month in JAMA Network Open — of Census Bureau surveys on medical indebtedness. 
Read more in MedPage Today.

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