Remember how Obamacare was supposed to result in fewer wasteful visits to emergency rooms? Yeah, yeah, I know: only a liberal wonk detached from reality—their natural habitat—could think that. Well guess what? Looks like it’s already failing. From the New York Times today:
Access to Health Care May Increase ER Visits, Study Suggests
Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits as people sought care from primary care doctors. But a rigorous new study conducted in Oregon has flipped that assumption on its head, finding that the newly insured actually went to the emergency room more often.
The study, published in the journal Science, compared thousands of low-income people in the Portland area who were randomly selected in a 2008 lottery to get Medicaid coverage with people who entered the lottery but remained uninsured. Those who gained coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room than their uninsured counterparts. The pattern was so strong that it held true across most demographic groups, times of day, and types of visits, including for conditions that were treatable in primary care settings.
The finding casts doubt on the hope that expanded insurance coverage will help rein in rising emergency room costs just as more than two million people are gaining coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
I have an idea: let’s send the architects of Obamacare on an all-expense paid trip to Antarctica to study global warming and how the sea ice is retreating.
November can’t come soon enough.
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