424
After Appalachian hospitals merged into a monopoly, their ERs slowed to a crawl
(kffhealthnews.org)
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
424 points (99.5% liked)
News
23297 readers
3296 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a relevant line:
This is inexcusable.
I live here and it sucks. Most of these hospitals are small and there’s only a few large ones that handle everything. My friend had a heart attack a few weeks ago and was in the ER hallway almost 24 hours before a room opened up and she could be admitted. The staff itself was great but UGH yes the wait times are awful at the main hospitals.
The weird thing is this is the exact argument many people give for socialized medicine: the wait times. "Imagine if the hospitals were run with the efficiency of the DMV. A,trak, or the Post Office," meant as a negative slant. "Imagine if FedEx was the only game in town, and to mail letter was $10, and to receive mail and packages was a $25/mo service charge, plus fees for every item delivered."
God I wish hospitals were as good as those. You either make an appointment online or walk in, depending on what you need, get it done, pay a small fee, and go home. And with those services all the fees are published for you to review ahead of time. You go to the hospital, you're going to get hit with mystery fees from seven different directions. The room you sat in, the RN that took your vitals, the MD you saw, the machine that took your x-ray, and the radiologist to look at the picture are all going to get billed separately.
The last time I was at the DMV a few months ago I set up my appointment online and didn't wait at all. I'd grabbed the wrong document type so the clerk scheduled me for 30 minutes out and I drove home and back again and got my license updated with no waiting involved despite having made an error on my part.
My parents still live in this area and have emailed me non stop about this since the beginning.
They live in a county that HAD two large hospitals. Both got absorbed by this cancer. One got shutdown.
All their ‘old’ reputable doctors took retirement when Ballad took over. Any younger doctors were forced to join Ballad or GTFO of town. Ballad had not only a monopoly on the heath care but if you were in any sort of field related (say you were an eye doctor) and you had your own practice but you occasionally went to the hospital to see patients - you were no longer allowed in the hospital unless you joined Ballad.
Basically you were blackmailed to joined these assholes or else. I found this out from some friends who stayed in the area and joined the medical field.
Seriously, the fact TN allowed this shit to pass just irritants me to no end.