From the Queens Tribune:Queens leads the city in the number of uninsured residents, reports the U.S. Census Bureau. And the rising numbers leave private hospitals struggling to maintain services with gradual decreases in revenue.
"It's a cause for concern," said Michael Hinck, spokesman for Jamaica Hospital and Flushing Hospital Medical Center. "What we're seeing in the ER is matching the findings of the report. The situation is only getting worse."
The U.S. Census Bureau reports individuals under the age of 65 in Queens without insurance is nearly 392,000, 20 percent of the population. Queens was ranked the top for individuals without insurance in the age category, after Manhattan which has an 18 percent rate of uninsured.
The closing of three hospitals in Queens in the last year have exacerbated the situation, causing patients usually treated at the closed facilities to flood existing medical centers. With a higher percentage of uninsured patients, local hospitals must deal with the troubles of generating revenue to remain open or face the same fate of similar defunct facilities.
5 comments:
Look on the positive side: we have plenty of bike lanes and the people that use them dont think this is a problem.
That's why our emergency rooms are full of illegals who are watering down the quality of our health care system! i.e. Elmhurst hospital.
Maybe the reason some of us can't afford insurance is that the premiums and general high cost of medical care is skyrocketing to cover the cost of freebies to Juan Carlos & Co.
Hey, check out California. Because of all the illegals bleeding state services, i.e. medical, welfare, California is in ruins. New York is not far behind. If you cut off all medical services to illegals, they would go home and the insured would see a drop in their premiums. Unfortunately, it will never happen because Bloomberg loves his Sanctuary City.
"If you cut off all medical services to illegals, they would go home and the insured would see a drop in their premiums"
No likely that your premiums will go down, once these "essential" businesses get you used to paying more they rarely reduce the cost. They just raise CEO salaries to suit.
As for "cutting them off" -if your self-righteous "great American" businessmen would either stop hiring illegals or insure them, this problem would be solved.
Every time an un-or-under insured employee gets injured working for someone, -you and I- pay.
The fact that we have this problem is testimony to what happens when you let interest groups such as the AMA, hospital reps and insurance cos. set government policy.
President Truman proposed a single payer system right after WW2. It was killed by the doctor's union (AMA). If we had adopted the same plan that most other developed economy's were/had implemented, we would not be being bled by this out of control system.
In mi coontri u gotta wook ova mountns to see dokta. En Queens, ess good healts care. I tell mi hole famli to coome here.
Hones Joe, he take care of em.
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