ER visits by chronic drunks cost you billion's of dollars every year. I think I know why.

We have Joe. He is homeless and spends each day drinking until he passes out in puddles of his own bodily fluids. Often he is in a public place where some concerned citizen, fearing he is a corpse, calls 911. The jail nurses refuse to take drunks until they have the golden stamp of approval by an MD so that if the drunk croaks in a cell they can say they aren't liable.

Joe comes to our ER once or twice a week. Once he came three times in a 24-hour period because the jail was full and they kicked him out swiftly. He is filthy, aggressive and agitated since his nice stupor was so rudely interrupted. He kicks, he bites, he punches and spits. He has blackened a nurses eye, broken another ones glasses and broken a paramedics rib. Imagine how much fun it is to wrestle to restrain someone who is covered in urine, vomit and diarrhea.

Sometimes his visit basically consists of the doctor the doctor calling the cops and telling them to come make a pick up. But all too often it involves an IV, a banana bag, a head CT to make sure his mental status isn't from him falling and suffering a subdural hematoma, multiple labs and so on and so on.

In the meantime he is screaming obscenities and disrupting the entire ER. Taking up a gurney while someone ill has to sit in the lobby waiting for care. Often multiple staff members are involved in restraining him so that their own patients are neglected.

Why are we wasting resources on these people? They need to be institutionalized and cared for since they are incapable of caring for themselves. It would be much cheaper. And for those of you in the ACLU who think that the rights of one supersedes the rights of the rest of us I say:

BITE MY LILY WHITE ASS!