This has been a legal requirement since 1986. It’s one of the odd things about the debate over socialized medicine: the US has had socialized medicine for 30 years now. The debate is merely over how it’s provided and who pays for it. But it’s never actually mentioned that this is the case.
>It requires hospital Emergency Departments that accept payments from Medicare to provide an appropriate medical screening examination (MSE) to anyone seeking treatment for a medical condition, regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay.
All they need to do is make Medicare sufficiently unattractive that more and more hospitals opt out of accepting Medicare patients and they're no longer covered by EMTALA.
