For many of us, the summer means attending barbecue parties in the backyard, laughter with neighbors and friends, watching children chasing the brightness, and enjoying fireworks that illuminate the night. But in a second, all of this can change. Your daughter trips, and her knee moved on a rock. Your father laughs for one moment, shorten his chest the next day. Suddenly, you are racing to the emergency room – confident that it is open, employed and ready.
This is the undeclared promise of our health care system: when the worst happens, there will be ER there, and no questions have been asked.
But this promise is about to become more difficult to keep it. A calm change in politics tucked in the “Great Budget Law” Reduces supply tax The country level from 6 % to 3.5 % in the coming years. This may seem to be a very easy bureaucratic terms, but for families all over America-which trusts in ER there will be when you wander the fever or bone fracture-it is possible that this change means very longer, overwhelmingly overlooks the doctors, and a system that is pushed to the edge of the abyss.
Here’s the reason: our health care system is similar to a series of domino. ERS, hospitals, elderly care homes, and the provider’s tax are one of the critical links that they all collect. It is a tool used by 47 states to fund Medicaid, the program that provides healthcare coverage for millions of Americans, both children and the elderly. Hospitals pay this tax. The United States uses it to cancel the medical dollars lock. Then these shared funds flow to the system, which helps to keep the ERS employees, the available hospital beds, and the homes of the elderly.
Most people are not aware of the provider’s tax, but this is why your local hospital can treat you and your family, whether you have private insurance or nothing at all.
Read more: The consequences of the large budget bill
Reducing this legislation may seem to this tax and appears to be a simple budget trim. In fact, it is a wreckball. You will reduce federal funding, leave hospitals and elderly care homes. new analysis By researchers at the College of Public Health at the University of Brown, this bill can force more than 600 homes to care for the elderly to close the country. This is 600 places concerned with grandparents or survivors of stroke or adults with disabilities. When these doors are closed, the entire system is common – and flows in the local ER.
Imagine: Your daughter’s knee bleeds through a temporary bandage. The waiting room is full. Gurnesys lines the halls. A baby crying. An elderly man counted pain. You are waiting for hours, not because the employees do not care, but because there is no place to transport patients. The hospital beds are full of people who should be in the care of the elderly – people recover from surgeries or heart attacks who cannot return home yet, but they have no other place to go to.
This is the way to change policy to a series of realistic effects. In this case, the closure of the nursing house, caused by reducing taxes on the provider, blocks the entire system.
This interdependence is not just a problem with politics. It is personal. Research shows that crowded ERS leads not only to long waiting, but lost diagnoses and the risk of death higher than time sensitive Heart attacksOr strokes, or blood rot. in Rural societiesThe consequences are worse. If you close the role of local elderly care or hospitals, the next ER may be an hour away, and this difference may mean life or death.
This strikes more difficult for families who are already struggling: low -income families and those with chronic diseases dependent on medicaid to get care. But it affects everyone. When Ers is immersed, no person gets faster help, whether you are the CEO or treasurer.
This is what the Republicans voted in Congress when transferring the bill to the law, and leaves countries with some good options. The states can finance the role of the elderly care through new taxes or add their providers fees, but this may mean differences from the state to the state in how hospitals and emergency rooms work. Not only is the dollar, but it comes to the promise that ER will be for your child’s broken arm or the sudden fall of your mother, and that the role of caring for the elderly is an important part of this system. If the states do not go up, it will be difficult to know how the system continues smoothly.
So, this summer, while spending time with your family and enjoying long days, think about what gives you real peace of mind: not only cooking and leave, but the health care system you can rely on. In most places in the United States, this will remain there this summer. But if hundreds of homes of the elderly care are acceptable next year, this promise of the presence of ER is ready next time that emergency strikes will become more difficult.
