One of the only universal rights to healthcare in the US is to be treated in the emergency room – a place where doctors are required to stabilize patients if their future health or life is in serious jeopardy.
That right, guaranteed by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known across the country by healthcare professionals as Emtala, was borne out of what was once a common practice called “patient dumping” – transferring patients who could not pay from private hospitals to public counterparts, even in emergency situations.
“There were many reasons it was enacted,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law at George Washington University’s Milken Institute of Public Health, and an attorney who helped craft the Emtala law.
“One was because people were dumping [patients] who were uninsured, but another reason – and it was in the congressional record – was pregnant women who were being turned away,” she said.