Studies confirm: Ins coverage increases use of ER, opposite what O'care advocates said to sell ACA

2 studies published today in the Journal Science confirm preliminary findings of the landmark Oregon Health Insurance Experiment.

You may recall that one of the primary reasons offered in support of Obamacare was that uninsured people, who use the ER as a default primary care health service, would be more likely to go to regular doctors and clinics for their primary, non-urgent, care if insurance was more widely available.

The OHIE studied the usage of emergency rooms, among other things, following an increase of health insurance coverage through Medicaid.

The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment is a landmark, randomized study of the effect of expanding public health insurance on the health care use, health outcomes, financial strain, and well-being of low-income adults.
...
We supplemented these data with emergency department records for an 18-month period following the lottery.
...
We found:
Emergency department visits overall ◦Medicaid increased the probability of using the emergency department by 7 percentage points (an increase of about 20 percent, relative to a base of 34.5 percent).
◦Medicaid increased the number of emergency department visits over the 18-month period by about 40 percent (0.41 visits, relative to a base of 1.02).

www.nber.org...

The implications, as set out in the Science articles, is that healthcare costs will likely increase significantly due to increased usage of ERs for non-urgent care under Obamacare!
Medicaid Increases Emergency-Department Use: Evidence from Oregon's Health Insurance Experiment

Straining Emergency Rooms by Expanding Health Insurance

Who would've guessed that another of the lies used to "sell" Obamacare will result in increased usage and costs, rather than reductions? So now, even if you've lost your policy, your primary care physician and specialistsa, you can still rely on the good old Emergency Room, and have the taxpayers pick up the tab!

This was expertly spelled-out in Slate today by an author whose spouse is a primary care Dr. who makes frequent ER referrals to her low-income patients.

Does Expanding Health Care Coverage Reduce ER Visits?

On the contrary: A new study suggests it increases visits to the emergency room—significantly.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a comment to accompany a study released Thursday in Science, which shows that Medicaid access increases emergency room visits by more than 40 percent. To get a sense of how medical practitioners would respond to the findings, I asked my wife, a primary-care physician at Bellevue Hospital, whether she thought Medicaid would increase or decrease ER use by the kinds of low-income individuals who constitute her patient population. Her reaction: “I refer people to the emergency room all the time. Of course it’ll go up.”

Even if my wife and her fellow primary-care providers aren’t shocked to find their everyday experience validated by a large-scale experiment, many others will be. Public officials from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to state governors in Michigan and Ohio have cited a reduction in traffic to overstressed emergency departments as a rationale for insurance expansion. They’d do well to change their talking points.

www.slate.com... _increase.html

How many more lies must come to light, and how high will attendant costs have to go before middle-America realizes they've been sold a bill of goods, and get rid of this robbery and top-down control of our lives and healthcare, once and for all?

jw

We have good insurance and when I went to the Outpatient clinic/ER , they often said it is an emergency room visit. From fifty bucks to six hundred was the difference back ten years ago. People wonder why the cost of Insurance rose so much. It is the discretion of the physician that makes an outpatient into an Emergency room treatment most times.

This practice changed here a while back for some reason. Half the time that I was in there, a doctor visit was just needed. I actually had better recovery at the outpatient clinic than at my regular doctor visits. By the time I got into an appointment, you did not need the appointment anymore but I still went since I waited for three days to get seen. The sickness had already turned the corner and I was kicking it on my own after three days.

reply to post by rickymouse


Here we have clinics you can go to and get seen very quickly. I sort of have 2 health insurance plans now though. I have my regular State plan (semi State employee), but the hospital I work for has it's own plan attached to the State plan, where I get a huge discount when I use my hospital.