This has resulted in multiple deaths as these people are specifically committed under Florida’s Baker Act as be adjudged to be “a threat to themselves or others”.

In one case, two police officers and the “patient” died in a shoot out because the “patient” got back to his house and gained access to his arsenal. The family had him committed because he was “talking crazy” and had all kinds of weapons in his house. They assumed they had at least a couple of days to gather up the weapons, but he walked away the same day he was taken to the hospital.

The hospital’s attorney is claiming that a state contract to hold psychiatric patients, and a circuit court order directing them to the hospital, doesn’t actually mean that the hospital can or should use “coercion” , like a locked door, to keep them there.

The hospital is being sued by the family of one of the dead officers for negligence, because “tort reform” would protect them if they sued for malpractice.

BTW, several HCA hospitals have this state contract, and they are all following the same procedure of allowing these people to walk away.

Corporations are only concerned with profits. If you can’t deny them of profits for a significant period they won’t change a thing. As you say, just the cost of doing business.

That’s about it, Hipparchia.

Similar illegal behavior: HCA, when a relative worked for them, had a policy of patient dumping. If an uninsured patient came into the ER, they would immediately bundle that patient into an ambulance again and rush him to the nearest public hospital, which was 50 miles away, regardless of whether the patient was stable and able to be moved yet. This is quite illegal of course, but HCA concluded that lawsuit settlements from payouts to the families of people who died during the dumping was cheaper than the cost of actually treating those people. This relative turned in HCA to state regulators for illegal patient dumping. The state regulators were wined and dined by HCA, and charged’em a token $200K fine and looked the other way when HCA (once again illegally) fired my whistle-blowing relative.

The whole system is corrupt from top to bottom, and in a fair or just world, we’d just wipe’em all off the map and go to a VA-style PHS. We do not, of course, live in a fair or just world. :(.

– Badtux the Health Care Penguin

If it is a drug trial, the drug should be free, and subject should be compensated. I don’t think that making people pay to be guinea pigs is right or reasonable.

Jail is my moderated position, I would actually prefer garroting then drawing and quartering, but we must move with the times.

I’m not irreconcilably opposed to being a human subject if the manufacturer is at least truthful in its claims, so I can make my own decision. I just don’t like having a drug misrepresented for the benefit of stockholders. As you said… that should spell jail time, starting at the top of the corp.