The Georgia hospital that failed to save Amber Thurman may have broken a federal law when doctors there waited 20 hours to perform a procedure criminalized by the state’s abortion ban, according to Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires hospitals to provide emergency care to stabilize patients who need it — or transfer them to a hospital that can. Passed nearly four decades ago, the law applies to any hospital with an emergency department and that accepts Medicare funding, which includes the one Thurman went to, Piedmont Henry in suburban Atlanta. The finance committee has authority over the regulatory agency that enforces the law.

In a letter sent Monday, Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, cites ProPublica’s investigation into Thurman’s death, which was found preventable by a state committee of maternal health experts. The senator’s letter asks Piedmont CEO David Kent whether the hospital has delayed or denied emergency care to pregnant patients since Georgia’s abortion ban went into effect. (Kent did not respond to requests for comment.)

  • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Compared to FDR, Democrats have moved left on health care (Medicare, ACA), gay rights (RFMA), race (VRA, Civil Rights Act), social welfare (Medicaid, SCHIP), women’s rights (Civil Rights Act, Lily Ledbetter), environment (IRA), drugs (multiple statewide decriminalization laws) …

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      2 months ago

      Are you not paying attention? How many people with Medicare and insurance can actually afford healthcare? Vra? Voting rights? How’s that going? Civil rights? How is that going? How many are incarcerated for nothing and next to nothing and performing slave labor? How many were wrongfully executed? Environment? Yeah, how’s that going? Statewide drug decrim and federal raids or businesses can’t bank. Women’s rights? 🤣 Please. How about human rights? Gaza. How about hungry kids in school? Working class living in cars, sleeping rough. Please.

      Eta zero irony that you’re arguing any of this, let alone women’s rights, in a thread about a woman who died because she couldn’t get reproductive care. Because doctors, not politicians. Sure. 😒

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        That’s a long list of problems that FDR didn’t put any effort into solving, at all.

          • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            If you support everything FDR did, but nothing more, then by definition you are neither to the left nor the right of FDR.

            If you support everything FDR did, except you also support the tiniest bit of health care reform, then by definition you are to the left of FDR.

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
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              2 months ago

              Yeah. Thanks for addressing my points on how much we didn’t gain and how much we’ve lost.

              • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Believe it or not, there is another political party in the US. They are supported by half the country and are successfully advancing their agenda, in part because people like you don’t put any effort into stopping them.