A few year ago my son was hit in the head and bleeding a lot. We should have just called 911 but decided to take him ourselves...what a joke. We had to wait for over 3 hours while they saw mostly Hispanics with no insurance that were using the ER as their personal physician. Here we sat my son still bleeding from an open head wound, both my husband and I covered in blood while they tended to a mother and her son that said they had food poisoning. They both had Wendy's bags and were munching on burgers however. I have been numerous times with my mother after she had fallen in her nursing home and seen the waiting room yet again filled with much of the same. While I realize that they can't deny health care to those that do not have insurance nor can they check to see if they are here in this country legally something has to be done to screen out the ones that do not need to be seen in the ER so that those that do won't end up like this lady.

Wow- they let you check thier insurance and legal status? Those Hispanics should sue- what a major violation of HIPPA and Federal laws! None of the staff should have told you anything about those people! OH>> they probably didn't and this post is full of assumptions- or perhaps fictional circumstances.

Wow, were you there?? This is not fiction this is fact! You must live under a rock somewhere and never visit an ER. They are full of illegals and no they did not let me check their papers nor did anyone have to tell me anything...I have eyes. They come for the free medical treatment just like the others that live off of society, except they have no right to be here. This is a fact of life now here in the good old USA. The next time you visit an ER and are a minority speaking English, welcome to the real world. And by the way, if the Hispanics are here illegally then the only right they have earned is to go home! That I will gladly pay for.

I don't usually go to the ER as a patient. I WORK in an ER. So I believe I am here more than you could even think about being here.

If you are judging people with your eyes then perhaps you should think of the old addage "can't judge a book by its cover". Ignorance is really unbecoming and those who blatantly distort the facts for their own purposes are seen as the non-credible people they are.

I work in an ER an we have full acess to a patient's insurance information, or lack thereof. The only thing that makes me sleep well at night is knowing that the people with insurance get admitted by the real doctors, the others get a resident!

Wow, what's with the resident bashing?

In my opinion, I've always gotten better service from medical residents. They have yet to become bitter from decades of being under appreciated and actually do things by the book. They actually look at charts, take a thorough history (and actually think about it), and treat us like human beings. While many so called "real" doctors tend to have the "seen this a million times" attitude and blow off patients w/out looking at charts or actually talking to the patient.

My family and I go to our local University Health Clinic and I'm proud to say our family doctor is a medical resident. She is, by far, the best doctor I've ever seen. Yeah, she probably can't give stitches with her eyes closed but she does take a complete history and is very knowledgeable in the current literature.