Diagnose your own heart attack because Medicaid won't pay for the E.R. doc to do it.

The future of health care in America was on display in a Washington State Court house this week, as a group of patients and Emergency Room doctors sued the state over new Medicaid rules.    The group objected to a proposed rule that characterized 700 diagnoses, including "chest pain," miscarriage, abdominal pain, and breathing problems, as "non-emergent" and may require the patient to pay for the E.R. visit if the patient is a return visitor to the E.R.  The physicians argued that the new rule puts patient safety at risk and unfairly denies payment for reasonable medical care. 

With one-third of the population of the State of Texas lacking any health insurance, and one in four kids in Michigan below the poverty line, rules like the one adopted in Washington threaten basic care needs for a significant and growing share of the U.S. population.