New York City emergency rooms are always full of patients, many of them lying on stretchers in the corridors. When a healthcare provider passes by, some will raise their hands, wave, shout, or try any way they can to get the attention of a doctor, nurse, or physician assistant. All US emergency rooms have to take all comers, and there is no shut-off valve in the triage desk, so even though it’s clogged, patients still come in.
Ken Langone is not one to seek special attention for himself; In fact, he takes pride in his humble roots. He was evacuated down the stairs by stretcher during Superstorm Sandy back in 2012 during a Hospitalization For the treatment of pneumonia along with many other conditions and was not given a specific treatment.
Indeed, it was Langone, in one of his greatest philanthropic moves, who drove driving To raise money to make NYU Grossman School of Medicine tuition-free. As part of that effort, he donated $100 billion to himself in 2019. It was a trend-setting move that was soon copied by other medical schools and relieved pressure on many of our future doctors across the country, allowing them to choose the essentials. Nurturing medical professionals for salaries that are lower than some professionals receive without choking hundreds of thousands of dollars in education loan repayments hanging over their heads. Compare this with Biden plan To give $10,000 in tuition waiver to everyone, currently barred by the US Supreme Court as it deliberates over its future, is another short-sighted government payout without an end game or long-term strategy attached.
Speaking of shortsighted initiatives, health care policies enacted under President Obama and now extended under President Biden are at least partially responsible for the mess we see in hospitals today. It’s not as kind or even sometimes offering VIP care to charitable donors as recent reports have been She suggests is the real problem. It expands the one-size-fits-all insurance coverage that pays the hospital and its doctors poorly while burdening them with massive amounts of bureaucratic paperwork that interferes with patient care.
Now President Biden is proposing Make it easier To buy the same flawed Obamacare plans that block our emergency claims for those who lose Medicaid coverage (18 million) if the coronavirus public health emergency ends in April 2023. The problem with many of these individual plans under the Affordable Care Act is that they rely on tight networks Of doctors and huge deductible roadblocks that suddenly give the sick patient nowhere else to turn for care other than the emergency room. This is one of the reasons for the extreme overcrowding in our emergency rooms.
The solution is more philanthropy like Langone’s tax spending is no more foolish than Biden’s. The solution is not to scoff at a private room where a patient with a real emergency can be seen quickly or a famous person like a US senator can be treated in private while he receives necessary care. Langone himself should be praised, not scolded. His name belongs to the buildings where he has done so much to support high-quality care and research. Those who work there are honored to be associated with his name.
Marc Siegel is Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of Radio Doctor at NYU Langone Health. He is a Fox News medical correspondent and author of the new book “COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science.”