Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Please ask Delegate Hodges and Senator Norment to reconsider their positions on Medicaid expansion. They are opposed to any expansion, and that opposition is costing Virginia $5 million every day.

I’ve been a doctor in emergency medicine for 25 years. Nights, weekends, holidays. Seeing all who come for help. This is not only our mission in emergency medicine, it is federal law. The law, EMTALA—the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act—states that emergency departments have to provide a medical screening exam and stabilizing treatment to anyone who comes to us for help. The law was written so that those with no insurance, or with no copay, can get the help they need for a stroke, heart attack, or injury. But how do they get care for preventive care, for health maintenance?

In the emergency department, we provide care to everyone, to the insured and the uninsured and the underinsured. We take care of their emergencies. We admit the...