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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I was under the impression that if you were to go to an emergency room, life saving surgery would be scheduled regardless of who is paying (or not paying), due to EMTALA. I can't imagine a hospital waiting for an insurance company's approval to pay for a procedure to schedule a child's life saving surgery.

Is this incorrect?

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if the kid has a steel spike through his abdomen then they will perform that surgery. If he's having seizures because of a brain tumor all they're required to do is stabilize and release.

This wasn't an immediate ER situation, at least directly (yet). More of a if this procedure doesn't get done now, at some point in the relatively near future, there will be multiple ER situations, almost certainly multiple hospitalizations, and one of those might go past the point of no return.

And the insurance still played games. Like, it's in your best interest to pay once and get this situation resolved in a scheduled/controlled manner than wait for multiple emergency hospitalizations AND have to pay for this in an emergency situation...you're probably talking at least 2x cost if not more.

> Is this incorrect?

yep

because "life-saving" isn't a single well-defined boolean condition that can be determined by ER staff as part of triage

> I can't imagine a hospital waiting for an insurance company's approval to pay for a procedure to schedule a child's life saving surgery.

then I guess you've never dealt with major health issues like cancer, blood disease, etc. etc. because what you're describing here happens all the time

Presumably parent is describing a non-emergency situation.

Good reminder that "life saving" and "elective" are orthogonal.

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