RT Journal
A1 Vickery K, Sauser K, Davis MM
T1 Policy responses to demand for health care access: From the individual to the population
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2013
FD February 20
VO 309
IS 7
SP 665
OP 666
DO 10.1001/jama.2012.96863
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.96863
AB 
A generation ago, Congress reacted to public demand for reform by passing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. EMTALA was timely legislation, intended by Congress to impart a social contract between the health care–seeking public and a US health care system that the public progressively distrusted. In reality, EMTALA served as a policy detour that may have misled the public into believing the problem of health care access had largely been solved. As President George W. Bush explained in 2007, “[P]eople have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”2