No: “Hospitals will then let the homeless still in need of medical care just walk out, forgoing the free ride to skid row.”
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The idea that discharging a homeless person to the street is improper “dumping” is a result of the belief (too common) that a hosptial is completely responsible for a person admitted to their facility rather than only for their medical care. It is paternalistic and, to the degree it is bought into, antiliberty. If I choose to live on the street, or in a shack in the woods with no fascilities, it is neither my hosptital’s problem to remedy nor their right to deny it. If I will die of exposure and self-neglect without nursing home care, well, better men than me have chosen worse deaths–some for my freedom to live as I wish.
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