A forthcoming Supreme Court decision this June on access to lifesaving care threatens the very basis of why I became an emergency medicine doctor: anyone, anywhere, anytime.
When a patient is rushed into my emergency department, I do not stop to ask them for their credit card. I don’t require them to put down a deposit before stopping their bleeding, treating their pain, or getting them treatment for a heart attack. I don’t stop to make sure our hospital accepts their insurance or to ask if they have insurance at all. I simply do what I have spent many years training to do: provide the best possible, and often lifesaving, care to people who are in crisis.
