What if you're a victim of a mass shooter but you don't have health insurance?

[Yavin4]

What if you're seriously wounded by a mass shooter and you don't have health insurance. Is the hospital allowed to deny you treatment? If they cannot, then who pays for your treatment? The mass shooter? What if the mass shooter is killed? Then what? Who pays?

How can health care be a privilege, but ownership of weapons of mass killings is a right?

--On Edit--
Most of the responses to my question is that the hospitals have to treat the victims. Forcing someone to provide a service? According to Rand Paul, why, that's slavery!

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/may/27/sarah-silverman/did-rand-paul-equate-right-health-care-slavery/

If it was up to Paul, the Vegas victims without health insurance should be left to die in the street. We don't want to enslave the doctors, now do we?

[LAGC]

1. "In this country, we have gun care, and health control."

The answer, of course, is that the shooting victim would likely still be treated, but then have to declare bankruptcy from the exorbitant medical bills.

[greymattermom]

2. You will get treatment

and you will get the bills later. Probably at the retail price, too.

[Wellstone ruled]

23. This has been the usual case

for someone who is caught up in injury situation which sends them to the ER,and no Insurance. Their Collection Agency will levy on anything you have and even go after your Relatives.

[Sgent]

28. You will get hospital treatment

followup care, rehab, etc. you probably won't unless you can pay.

[Laffy Kat]

30. Sue the casino?

That's my only idea.

[hlthe2b]

3. Hospitals by law can not refuse emergent (life v death) care...

They can, however hound the individual for every cent for the rest of their life--even garnish wages. Sometimes hospitals recoup some fees from private donations after such tragedies and then discount or even write off the rest. Sometimes the individual might qualify for medicaid and they can try to get the state to certify them on an expedited basis.

But, worst case scenario, is #1.

[TrishaJ]

4. Great question!

Perhaps in exchange for absolutely NO control on the easy access to guns, Congress can provide Universal Healthcare in anticipation of the many many more mass shootings we will continue to have??

[MineralMan]

5. Oh, they'll treat you, and then they'll send you a monstrous bill

to add insult to your injuries. Who will pay? You will, if you can. If you can't, there's always bankruptcy, I guess.

[Botany]

6. thoughts and prayers

[onethatcares]

38. yep, stuff them in an envelope and

send it to the doctors/hospital. Each prayer is worth 10 bazzillion american dollars and each thought is worth more. Add a line in small print, very small print, that opening the envelope makes the receiver bound to the terms of the agreement they haven't read yet.

See, it's very simple.

[bearsfootball516]

7. I believe hospitals must provide treatment if asked, by law

[Demsrule86]

10. That is untrue. Hospitals must stabilize people.

That is all. My cousin died because he did not have health insurance...he had a pre-existing condition and could not get it. People die without health insurance.

[Orrex]

12. Yes, but that's not really the question, is it?

Of course they have to treat you, but you could be looking at half a million dollars in medical bills.

As a gesture of goodwill, especially following a horrific event like this, hospitals will sometimes waive or reduce the cost of treatment, especially for people of limited income.

A hospital can face catastrophically bad press for financially destroying the victim of such a tragedy. Of course, many hospital chains have multi-million dollar public relations agencies to handle this sort of thing.


The answer--and frankly the answer to just about every question asked on behalf of the less-than-wealthy--is this: you're fucked. Get used to it.

[delisen]

8. Great Point.

[haele]

9. ER won't deny you service, but you might have to apply for their charity funds.

And if they don't have any, they'll send you a bill with an expectation that you contact them to make payments on it.
The main issue will be the recovery period. You'll probably have to do the "penny jar"/GoFundMe route to pay for any follow-on care that is needed. That is, if the shooting didn't disable you and qualify you for Social Security Disability - once you went through the two/three years it would take to get your claim approved and get you onto Medicare with a small stipend to support you.

But whatever happens, you're still going to have to come up with some sort of money for the first couple years. No one is going to pay for your pain and suffering, and I doubt the shooter's estate is going to provide anyone involved with enough money to cover the ER bill - because the City of Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay will have first claim for compensation of first responder's time and effort, and for property damage.

Haele

[bagelsforbreakfast]

16. I suspect the deep pocket here, Mandalay might encounter some possible liabino?

no?

[haele]

29. It's Nevada. Maybe a bit of liablity, but I doubt it. Won't stop a class action suit.

And the shooting victims and families will get butkis from any suit against the casino or the concert venue after the law firms get their cut from a court case that can potentially last years.
One can argue all they want about "shoulda known this could happen", but the casino can always argue that security risks have to be balanced, and they had taken as much precaution as any reasonable person could expect them to ensure the safety of guests without impacting customer service.
Courts do not typically approve of "It happened and I got hurt, so you're liable" suits. They look at whether or not there were reasonable precautions taken to manage risk, and whether or not the defendant broke any laws or took any negligent shortcuts.

Right now, there are no laws requiring a bar, club, or hotel to check all bags of guests for illicit substances or potential firearms, or make everyone always go through a metal detector before they walk onto the site. Nor is there any expectation that these places should do so, with millions of visitors and "walk through" gamblers and club goers a year. That's pretty much the only way it would have been noticed that the shooter - apparently a regular high stakes gambler to that hotel - brought a massive amount of firearms in the hotel.

No, they'll all go after the shooter's estate.

Haele

[Yavin4]

36. Also, Nevada is an open carry state.

The casinos could argue that people should expect random gun fire.

[Jim Lane]

44. As a plaintiff's lawyer, I'd say No.

"My clients were injured by someone on the Mandalay Bay premises" doesn't make out a case.

The classic elements of a negligence cause of action are: duty, breach of duty, proximate cause, damages. Thus, a plaintiff would have to identify some duty that Mandalay Bay had that it didn't perform, and the performance of which would have prevented the injuries. From my casual reading about the massacre, I don't see any good theory.

At common law (i.e., development of cases not based on any statute), the most common catch-all duty is the duty to exercise reasonable care. Does reasonable care require a hotel to install airport-style security with metal detectors for anyone who enters? Does it require the hotel to search every guest room hourly to make sure no arsenals have been brought in? Not in my book (and I'm biased toward injured victims).

The only other possibility would be if there's a statute imposing a special duty on a hotel to monitor the conduct of its guests. I never heard of such a statute anywhere. That there might be one in Nevada, where the legal system is a wholly owned subsidiary of the casino industry, strikes me as, to put it mildly, unlikely.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

57. The only way I could see the m being liable if there is a security video of the bell hop ...

... knowingly carrying the arsenal upstairs for him. Or if it comes out a maid notified management that the guy in 135 has an arsenal and is acting strange.

Probably not technically liable but worth settling.

[marylandblue]

11. A lot of people go bankrupt due to medical bills

That's how the rest of us pay for their care.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

13. get small n/m

[rurallib]

14. I have tried to contact reps to make liability insurance mandatory with a gun purchase

to pay hospital bills and loss of property if someone is injured with a gun registered to you.
Let the insurance companies set the rates - no purchase without insurance.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hospital-costs-for-those-with-gun-injuries-approach-100000-per-patient-2017-10-03
This article gives an idea of some of the costs.

Mother Jones in April of 2015 had a huge article on this - followed the life of a woman who was wounded, disabled and left without a job after a gun incident. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/true-cost-of-gun-violence-in-america/

You and I eventually pay the bill. The victims often spend a life of fear and pain.
Seldom are the victims ever researched to see what happens to them.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

18. YES! You have to have car insurance so... n/m

[rurallib]

22. yep - not interfering with your "rights" just making you responsible for the damage

done by the gun.
If you lose it or it is stolen, you are still liable.
Rates set by insurance companies based on experience. If you are a bad gun owner, you will have high rates.

If you have 43 guns, that is a policy for each gun.
If you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford a gun.
If your gun has safety features that help keep it from being used by others, rates cut etc.

[Jim Lane]

45. Imposing individual liability for a stolen gun seems unreasonable.

An owner of a car must purchase liability insurance, but neither the owner nor the insurance company is liable if someone steals the car and then runs over a victim. There's liability only for permissive use (at least in New York and, I'll hazard a guess, everywhere -- leaving aside a claim for negligence against the owner based on leaving the keys in the car or the like).

Alternative possibility: a mandatory risk pool. On all purchases of guns and/or ammo, there's a tax, over and above any state or local sales tax. The tax proceeds go into a trust fund. The fund's administrator can dip into it to make compensatory payments to victims of gun violence.

I can't begin to list all the practical problems that occur to me, but it might still be better than compulsory liability insurance.

[rurallib]

49. good idea - thanks

[hack89]

37. Insurance companies will never cover criminal acts

Last edited Wed Oct 4, 2017, 04:58 PM - Edit history (1)

They look at mass shootings and see a huge loss.

Secondly, this will make the NRA a fortune. They will simply do an AARP and start selling insurance.

[rurallib]

40. Thank you for these excellent points

In my mind I had a winner and could see no wrong.
Sure appreciate your common sense.

Do you see any way that some market place idea (that was my intention - to use market forces to rein them in) that could be used.

I think it is very probable that if government imposed some crackdown or buy back or whatever, the reaction would be horrible.
Using the Repugs god of "market forces" would I think make it more palatable.

This just can't go on, but there must be some way to stop it without incurring a rebellion.

Anyway, thanks much.

[ThoughtCriminal]

41. Untrue

If you injure somebody while DUI or driving over the speed limit, your insurance company cannot get out of paying the claim.

It is an often repeated NRA lie.

[hack89]

42. If you deliberately use your car to run over a crowd of people they won't

Check the fine print of your policy. Mine is pretty explicit on the issue.

[ThoughtCriminal]

51. Actually that is also not true

"Insurance that pays to innocent victims for willful, intentional or even criminal acts is common when the purpose of the insurance is to protect third parties. Despite the statements from insurance industry representatives– “if you use your car as a weapon to intentionally run down a pedestrian or another motorist, there is no coverage”, motor vehicle insurance in many states would in fact cover exactly that case. The case commonly cited in legal discussions to illustrate this point is Wheeler v. O’Connell, 297 Mass. 549 , 553 (1937) This case held that compulsory insurance was very different than voluntary insurance, that public policy considerations did not prevent coverage of intentional acts, and that the insurance terms should be interpreted in light of the intention of the compulsory insurance law. Many later cases in various states have taken the same position even in situations where insured persons committed serious crimes including murder."

This and other examples here:
http://www.guninsuranceblog.com/gun-insurance-for-willful-intentional-criminal-acts/#more-412

[X_Digger]

47. Driving under the influence is the crime. The accident was not intentional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liability_insurance

Generally, liability insurance covers only the risk of being sued for negligence or strict liability torts, but not any tort or crime with a higher level of mens rea. This is usually mandated by the policy language itself or case law or statutes in the jurisdiction where the insured resides or does business.

In other words, liability insurance does not protect against liability resulting from crimes or intentional torts committed by the insured. This is intended to prevent criminals, particularly organised crime, from obtaining liability insurance to cover the costs of defending themselves in criminal actions brought by the state or civil actions brought by their victims. A contrary rule would encourage the commission of crime, and allow insurance companies to indirectly profit from it, by allowing criminals to insure themselves from adverse consequences of their own actions.

Only an idiot thinks that crime is insurable.

[Ms. Toad]

52. You're confusing progecting the criminal or tortfeasor,

with protecting the innocent victims.

You typically cannot buy insurance to protect yourself from the consequences of your intentional or criminal wrongdoing (meaning you can still be found liable). On the other hand, insurance very frequently protects innocent victims - and then turns around and sues the criminal or tortfeasor to repay themselves.

[X_Digger]

53. A criminal shooter's insurance would tell you to piss up a rope for those victims' injuries.

It's often written right in the policy.

[Ms. Toad]

54. The quotes you have provided only address liablity

for the shooter (i.e. it will not pay fines, for an attorney to defend him, or protect him from suits by his victims). That is not the same as not paying out his victims (and then collecting from the shooter).

[X_Digger]

55. "or protect him from suits by his victims" - that is the gist of what we're discussing. *shrug*

Imagine the latest asshole (I refuse to say his name) had a general liability policy.

Do you imagine that his insurance company would pay for his victims' medical costs?

Really?

[Ms. Toad]

56. Correct. The shooter is not protected from suit by his victims.

The insurance company is not going to save his rear end if his victims sue him.

That provision says absolutely nothing about whether the victim's injuries will be covered. Those are two different questions. If the insuarance company ends up paying out to the victims, it will turn around and sue the the shooter for what it paid out in the event the injuries were caused intentionally or by a criminal act..

[X_Digger]

59. Oh FFS. What event would you suppose would happen that would prompt the insurance to pay victims?

Would they just track them down and hand them checks?

No.. there'd likely need to be a claim. At which point the insurance company would say, "this is an intentional act by the policy holder and is not indemnified, as set out in section X, para Y, part Z of the policy." Is the insured liable? Absolutely. Is it a covered cost? Nope.

[Ms. Toad]

60. No more than car insurance companies hunt down victims

and hand them checks. The claim would be made by someone injured by the policy holder.

Indemnification of the policy holder against liability is different question from whether a third party claim is covered. You keep trying to merge the two questions.

[X_Digger]

61. So, you really think an insurance company would pay the medical bills..

Last edited Thu Oct 5, 2017, 03:00 PM - Edit history (1)

.. of a mass shooter's victims?

Is that what you really think?

C'mon, counselor, spit it out.


edit: as expected, not a peep.

[X_Digger]

46. Liability insurance doesn't cover intentional, criminal acts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liability_insurance

Generally, liability insurance covers only the risk of being sued for negligence or strict liability torts, but not any tort or crime with a higher level of mens rea. This is usually mandated by the policy language itself or case law or statutes in the jurisdiction where the insured resides or does business.

In other words, liability insurance does not protect against liability resulting from crimes or intentional torts committed by the insured. This is intended to prevent criminals, particularly organised crime, from obtaining liability insurance to cover the costs of defending themselves in criminal actions brought by the state or civil actions brought by their victims. A contrary rule would encourage the commission of crime, and allow insurance companies to indirectly profit from it, by allowing criminals to insure themselves from adverse consequences of their own actions.

[gratuitous]

15. Luckily, Congress has addressed part of this conundrum

You absolutely can't sue weapons manufacturers for the foreseeable result of the intended use of their products, so you'll be glad to know that Glock, Smith & Wesson, and the other companies won't be hurt financially by all these dead and maimed bodies their products created. Isn't that nice?

[Heddi]

17. Many states have funds for victims of violent crimes

My husband and I were injured by a home invader and Florida (!!) has a fund for victims of violent crimes.

it:
1) allowed for the reimbursement of our homeowners insurance deductible
2) allowed for our out of pocket medical costs to be reimbursed
3) reimbursed for lost wages due to the attack

had one of us died we would have received compensation

It also prevents our homeowners insurnace from dropping our policy or raising our rates because of the damages associated with the break in, which was nice, because the break in happened like 2 months after we bought our house, and the damage payout was close to $30k.

[renate]

33. I am so sorry that happened to you

There are no words. I can't imagine how terrifying that must have been.

[Heddi]

35. It was pretty fucking horrible, I have to say

Nothing like waking up to the sound of a bath-tub-drugged out stranger doing a swan dive through your front window at 2:17am, running through your house and standing at your beside, fucked out of his mind, screaming that people are trying to kill him.

well, someone was trying to kill him, just not the ones he thought.

[Quayblue]

19. Office for Victims of Crime

https://www.ovc.gov/map.html


Convicted federal offenders pay through fines, bail revocations and other sources.

Hospitals can recoup reimbursement through the fund (I've worked in this capacity somewhat). It is also illegal for hospitals to deny emergency treatment (EMTALA).

However, I do get your point.

[taught_me_patience]

20. A good reason to have health insurance

those that don't face potentially huge bills for events that might not even be their fault. Even if you're healthy, you never know what is going to happen.

[hatrack]

21. It means you have more freedom than the rest of us!

Rejoice!!

[madamesilverspurs]

24. I emailed my senator

who has taken about $4million from the gun lobby. I urged him to donate that money to cover the victims' hospital expenses.

He won't even consider doing that, but I plan to keep bugging him about it anyway.


.

[democratisphere]

25. Priorities. Guns, weapons and ammunition are much more important

than people's health and well-being.

[SHRED]

26. Healthcare via gofundme

Merica

[RamblingRose]

27. Don't they also now have a pre-existing condition? n/t

[Crunchy Frog]

31. The state should pay for it with taxes on firearms and ammo.

[tymorial]

32. The ambulance will take you to the hospital

You will then be triaged and the extent of your injuries will be assessed. If you need immediate care then it will be provided to save your life. No one is going to halt care in that situation to ask for your ability to pay. Once you are stable then someone from registration will inquire about your insurance and finances. If you have family with you, they will be asked but not before you are stable.

If you are without insurance than the hospital will work with you to set up a payment plan. If you have a high deductible we will still work with you to set up a payment plan. No trauma facility will ever turn away a patient and you will be seen by a doctor even if your injuries are deemed minor by a triage nurse.

[onethatcares]

39. i love me some payment plans

350K at 18% with a lien against everything I may ever have all because I was dumb enough to buy a ticket to the movies or a concert or to send my child to school and all those other things that are daily life because of some nutcase with a gauddammm gun.

Hope I don't miss a payment, or am late. The interest climbs to 27.9% at that point.

Am I pissed off about this. You bet your ass.

[tymorial]

43. I see

[LanternWaste]

34. Too often seems Gun Care takes precedence over Health Control

Too often seems Gun Care takes precedence over Health Control by our idiots, simpletons and dolts.

[raccoon]

48. Ain't it grand to live in America where any fool can buy an automatic weapon

Ain't it grand to live in America where any fool can buy an automatic weapon and people have freedom from healthcare?

[Autumn]

50. Health insurance? Don't need no stinking health insurance. Prayers and thoughts were

sent out from everywhere.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

58. "Take two thoughts and prayers, and call me in the morning..."

Or, alternatively, start a GoFundMe page to cover your medical bills.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

62. I know a woman who was severely beaten in a robbery in Nevada

Her hospital fees and a dental crown were covered by a state trust. I think psychiatric care was also offered but she didn't avail herself of it.

[Hamlette]

63. required to treat law passed in 1986 due to "dumping" by hospitals

they would take patients with no insurance or assets to the ER door stop of another hospital and leave them there. It was a big deal in California I assume in other states as well. So Congress acted. Back when we had a Congress that did good instead of evil.

[treestar]

64. And it's bullshit as they get paid via

the single payer system. I hate libertarians (that's what that kind of language about "slavery" sounds like).