> Increasingly, the staff of the ED who have always upheld the proud notion of being the one place where the doors are always open to anyone who needs care at any time, have felt besieged.

Yeah, okay.

At another nearby "nonprofit" local hospital, not atypically: (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/podcasts/the-daily/nonpro...)

> The centerpiece of this program were a series of scripts, like theatrical scripts, that outlined in this play exactly how employees should try to get money from patients, even those who are supposed to receive free care. And these documents were distributed to anyone at the hospital who might interact with patients and talk to them about payment.

> So in one training document, for example, the employees were told, do not accept the first no. And then staff are led through a series of questions to ask patients. The first was, how would you like to pay that today? If that question didn’t work, employees were told to ask for half the balance. If that didn’t work, staff could offer to set up a payment plan, like the kind that Alexandra went on. And what’s critically missing from this collection program is any way of screening patients to determine whether they should qualify for free care.