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Comment by freehorse | Hacker News Reader

For people from most places outside the US, I bet such stories from US's medical system sound totally crazy. It is crazy for a medical system to function like this charging somebody for being involuntarily treated, and even more for no medical cause.

What would have happened, to the hospital's part, if they had declared that you were not intoxicated and you should not have been brought to the hospital, and sent you on your way? Would the police have had to justify dragging you to the hospital, and pay for your examination? I suspect that going along with the police may have been the decision with the simplest and most profitable outcome for everybody (apart from you) and that the hospital side was incetivised to go along with police's story rather than against, but I am not sure how things there typically work in such cases.

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There was a highly publicized case a few years back where the police entered a hospital and ordered a nurse to draw a blood sample for an unconscious patient who had been in a car accident. They had no warrant and she refused per hospital policy (and law). The cops roughed her up pretty bad and arrested her.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/01/561337106...

Also good to point out that the reason they -rushed- to the hospital to do this was that the person who had hit them was an off-duty cop who was drunk and had run a red light, and they were looking for something, anything, to pin on this guy instead as being responsible, rather than the cop.

Said unconscious patient later died, if I recall correctly, too.

Abuse of state power is the one thing I think we should keep the death penalty for. Police who use their power like that should hang.

You think we should combat abuse of state power…with a power that is really easy for the state to abuse?

It would only apply to agents of the state. Live by the sword and all that.

so now the people wielding all the power are risking death? sounds like an even more powerful incentive to cover stuff up extra hard and shoot all witnesses, etc.

This sounds a little "reductio ad absurdum" - "we can't stop anyone from doing anything".

"You come at the king, you'd best not miss" and all.

Take that to the next level. What are you worried about, and how would you combat it?

What they ended up doing was getting a warrant AFTER the fact, then the smartest of the doctors waited to sign his chart until after that. Right after I was served the warrant I was released, that was the culpability they needed to save their asses.

The nursing board then used the warrants signed AFTER the nurses charts to shield nurses from my malpractice complaints. The board argued essentially nurses are performing a police search if told to execute a search, thus it's nonmedical search. However if you challenge the police, they argue it is medical care not a police search thus you can't challenge that angle either.

You should probably still try to sue each medical practitioner individually. Even in the 1980s, a doctor wouldn't interfere with something like preventing a mule from private lavatory use. If a new generation is dumb, there's only one recourse offered for fixing them.

Yes Ashley Cervantes, who was finger raped by doctors at the same hospital as me by the same CBP did that.

She lost as judges ruled doctors basically become deputized and are non medical unofficial police when directed to a warrantless search.

https://holdcbpaccountable.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ce...

Lawyers involved told me they'd given up and wouldn't take my case. The trouble is it is medical when you challenge the police search, and nonmedical when you challenge the medical care. The judges and police created a catch 22.

Ah, wow, sometimes I forget why I won't even visit that 'country'.

You might consider contacting the Institute for Justice, which specializes in pro bono cases like yours.

I live in a country in the EU where conversion therapy is illegal. One of my trans friends was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital, got emotionally and physically abused (no food, tied to bed), was forced into the male wing of the institute despite being legally a female and had "conversion therapy" performed on her against her will.

It's no secret that lgbt people and prisoners are being mistreated by medical professionals globally.

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