The new healthcare law will pack 32 million newly insured people into emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities.
A chief aim of the new healthcare law was to take the pressure off emergency rooms by mandating that people either have insurance coverage. The idea was that if people have insurance, they will go to a doctor rather than putting off care until they faced an emergency.
People who build hospitals, however, say newly insured people will still go to emergency rooms for primary care because they don’t have a doctor.
“Everybody expected that one of the initial impacts of reform would be less pressure on emergency departments; it’s going to be exactly the opposite over the next four to eight years,” said Rich Dallam, a healthcare partner at the architectural firm NBBJ, which designs healthcare facilities.
“We don’t have the primary care infrastructure in place in America to cover the need. Our clients are looking at and preparing for more emergency department volume, not less,” he said.
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9 comments:
Which begs the question - what were all those sick people doing before? Or alternately, why are you hating on sick people? Is there a limit to the number of sick people you think deserve care? Perhaps our medical facilities were always in short supply and we just didn't know because people were going without care? You can help alleviate the problem by not going yourself.
When I was in Africa a year ago , I saw people lined up for over a mile to see a doctor , welcome to the obamie 3rd world U.S.A..
Washington's "Healthcare Reform" is really simply to understand. There were 31 million people without health insurance not healthcare. The Reform just sets up a way to have taxpayers pay insurance premiums for these 31 million people so that medical facilities and drug companies have additional patients that can actually be billed.
low cost public clinics will put the hospitals in check and drive down costs.sorry about their luck
I believe Al in Fenwick is right on the $$.
Good post.
small clinics will put everything back in line over the wreckless spending of those big hospitals
Al in fenwick ,
you are the one that is simple.
Well if Rich Dallam, an architect says so, then this must be the case.
it's already starting. just received notie that my family's insurance premiums will increase over $200 this coming fiscal year.
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