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Talyen42

Hospital corporations and insurance corporations are not your friend.

You shouldn't have to do this in a first world country, but:

* Go to the ER without ID

* (optional) Ask how much it will cost

* (optional) They do not give prices, as a matter of policy

* They must treat you by law

* Afterwards, offer a cash payment you deem reasonable

* They will accept or decline it

Transaction complete.

For non-emergency care and prescriptions, get cash quotes up front, pay in cash, and order discount online prescriptions from canada, a first world country.

For chronic medical conditions, leave the US and immigrate to a first world country.

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Important note on ER care.

The job of the ER is to prevent you from dying, not fix you. If you are injured in a way that requires an expensive surgery and therapy to fix but won't actually kill you if left untreated, even if it cripples you, they are not obligated to fix you under the law.

How did your healthcare system get messed up to such a level? This is criminal in western Europe.

The short answer is racism and greed.

American Exceptionalism combined with FUD.

It goes back to WWII when we had a strange price controls on labor. Health insurance was a way for employers to provide employ compensation circumventing that. Originally it was quite manageable, but as with any system where neither the consumer nor the producer of the good/service has any incentive to keep down costs, it spiraled out of control.

Also, president Richard Nixon effectively linked national health care with socialism as part of Cold War propaganda. (That said, he did offer comprehensive health reform too that in a number of ways was more dramatic than we achieved under president Obama, but the congress killed it.)

And of course this is bad for everyone involved. We don't pay for someone to get preventative or proactive treatments for a chronic condition, instead choosing to divert very expensive ER resources to treat as a series of emergency interventions. Worse for the patient, worse for the hospital, worse for anyone else paying into the system.

Does this actually work? Won't they detain you and call the police like a shop or restaurant would if you don't pay the bill?

You forgot the "They must treat you by law" part. You are effectively coercing them into treating you when you walk in the door.

To be fair, it's society coercing them. Using a complicated system of certification and reimbursement rather than guns.

Just to be clear what the alternative to coercion (and I agree with that characterization): rejecting ER patients at the door means some of them will literally be dying in the streets.

Actually they don’t have to “treat” you per se — only stabilize a life-threatening emergency condition. They don’t have to treat your sore throat.

I don't forget. They must treat you doesn't mean that you must not pay. They can just send you the bill home after the police get your details. If you have or not money to pay, that's a secondary issue, just like when you get a loan.

Interesting question. I can't find anything online about a hospital invoking Shopkeeper's Privilege, but chances are they might try to, and even if the police would eventually release you, your identity would surely be discoverable by the hospital. I don't think the OP is giving safe advice.

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