Ronald Reagan's unfunded healthcare mandate.
It should be remebered in 1986 the Republicans controlled the Senate. This was a bipartisan law.
In 1986, the GOP icon signed a law that requires hospitals to treat poor people and undocumented immigrants
By Alex Seitz-Wald
As the Romney campaign debates itself about whether the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is an evil tax or a unconstitutional penalty, it’s worth remembering that Republican presidential icon Ronald Reagan imposed his own national healthcare mandate on the country. The mandate is well know today — it requires emergency rooms to treat anyone in need, regardless of their ability to pay — but the fact that Reagan signed it into law is often forgotten.
By the mid 1980s, so-called “patient dumping” had became a major concern. The practice involved hospitals transferring patients in need of medical attention to other institutions to avoid footing the bill, or even discharging them before they were properly treated. One influential study of Cook County, Illinois, which contains Chicago, found that patients transferred because they lacked insurance were twice as likely to die as those treated at the transferring hospital. The vast majority of these transfers were for the hospitals’ financial reasons, even though it delayed care and jeopardize patients’ health. Physician organizations had policies in place mandating that hospitals treat everyone “regardless of race, creed, sex, nationality, or sources of payment for care,” as the bylaws from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals read, but without the force of law behind them, they were often ignored and people went without care.
In 1986, Congress passed the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which contained the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The law requires hospitals to treat patients in need of emergency care regardless of their ability to pay, citizenship, or even legal status. It applies to any hospital that takes Medicare funds, which is virtually every hospital in the country.
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/05/reagans_healthcare_mandate/
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