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Friday, June 06, 2014

ER Hospital Visits Mounting Because of Obamacare, Studies Show

Emergency room visits have not slowed down, as Obamacare backers predicted when they supported the Affordable Care Act.

Instead, as the ACA and the accompanying expansion of Medicaid are implemented, they've corresponded with an increase in people seeking urgent hospital care.

Studies about emergency room visits, including, most recently, by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), found that more people than ever were visiting the hospital for expensive emergency treatment rather than turning to primary care physicians.

"This is counter to what was said by those advocating for the ACA and particularly the expansion of Medicaid, but also the expansion of insurance," said Dr. Scott Atlas, a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center and a senior fellow who studies healthcare policy at the Hoover Institution.

"Labeling people as insured is not synonymous with saying they have access to medical care," Atlas told Newsmax.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

May have been counter to what the supports of Barrycare said would happen, but it is not counter to what the opponents of Barrycare said would happen.. Realize this will drive UP the cost of insurance (emergency room visits are more expensive than PCP visits) and cause people to complain about insurance. This will again help Barry make a play for single provider healthcare... let's ask some Vet's how they feel about that...

Anonymous said...

This is because it is human nature to wait until the last minute for most things, including healthcare. Once again another democrat epic failure as predicted by the GOP. When are people going to wake up and see that the democrats are intellectually inferiour. Vote straight Republican this next election. We need to start cleaning up the mess of the obama years.

Anonymous said...

why would anyone have believed that this fiasco of a system would see a drop in ER visits?

Queensgirl52 said...

There is a subculture of people who are emergency room junkies and will always go to emergency regardless of what else is available. There's one in my family. This woman doesn't have insurance issues; she was on Medicaid till she became eligible for Medicare. She also has a primary care doctor. However, she's a hypochondriac drama queen who loves attention. Several years ago, she announced that she had had a "mini-stroke" and one of her carotid arteries was 100% blocked. Nothing was ever done about the alleged blockage and she's still going strong. More recently, she said she had a lung problem which would require surgery. That never happened either.