Robert Behounek walked into the Albuquerque emergency room last fall with telltale signs of a heart attack.<\/p>\n
For weeks, he\u2019d been having trouble breathing and terrible swelling all over his body. What began as searing pain in one of his arms was now a relentless ache in his chest. The receptionist at Albuquerque ER & Hospital asked for his health insurance card, but he didn\u2019t have insurance. She told Behounek that his visit could cost upward of $1,600.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018I don\u2019t have that. Can you just bill me afterward? I\u2019m worried I\u2019m having a heart attack,\u2019\u201d Behounek recalled. \u201cShe just said, \u2018There\u2019s nothing we can do for you. We can\u2019t see you here unless you pay the cost first.\u2019 I said, \u2018But you guys are an ER,\u2019 and she said, \u2018We\u2019re not that kind of ER.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For the past 40 years, it\u2019s been illegal in the U.S. for emergency departments to turn away patients because of an inability to pay. But that only applies to hospitals that contract with Medicare. Houston-based Nutex Health, which runs the hospital Behounek visited, has opted not to at most of its hospitals, so it\u2019s not bound by that law. Nutex claims it complies voluntarily, screening every patient to ensure they\u2019re not dying before demanding payment. But some patients say they were never screened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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