The Crisis in Hospital Emergency Departments: Overcoming the Burden of Federal Regulation


 

Publication Date: July 2007

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): John S. O'Shea

Research Area: Health

Keywords: Health care; EMTALA; overregulation; uncompensated care

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act makes the hospitals and doctors that provide emergency care to the uninsured less able and increasingly less willing to provide such care. A system that emphasizes personal freedom and expands private health care coverage, driven by free-market principles of consumer choice and competition, will yield much better value.