Well, damnitall, if only someone had gotten off their behinds and warned us that this could happen!
(Science Daily) The average monthly emergency department visit increased by 5.7 percent in Illinois after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), although the population remained essentially flat. In Massachusetts, while visits to emergency departments climbed steadily between 2005 and 2014, availability of on-call specialists (surgeons, psychiatrists and other specialists) declined “significantly.” The results of two state-specific studies were published online last Thursday in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“Increased Emergency Department Use in Illinois After Implementation of the Affordable Care Act” and “Decline in Consultant Availability in Massachusetts Emergency Departments: 2005 to 2014”).
Now, in all fairness
“Emergency departments continue to be squeezed by pressures inside and outside the hospital,” said Scott Dresden, MD, MS, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill., the lead author of the Illinois paper. “A large post-ACA increase in Medicaid visits and a modest increase in privately insured visits outpaced a large reduction in emergency department visits by uninsured patients. We still don’t know if these results represent longer-term changes in health services use or a temporary spike in emergency department use due to pent up demand.”
Long term or short term? That’s the question. Will this be the same for on-call ER specialists? The study uses the term of 2005-2015, so, it can’t all be blamed on Ocare. Remember, though, Massachusetts passed their health law, Romneycare, in 2006, so, we do have a better idea of the long term results of government run health care.
We were told that Ocare would reduce ER visits. Well, this is not the first study to show an increase in ER visits, along with a reduction in ER personnel.
The Chicago Tribune chimes in on the study
One of the goals of expanding coverage to all was to reduce the use of pricey services, such as emergency department visits, which can sometimes be a last resort for people who don’t see doctors regularly, according to the study.
But the study’s authors noted that the spike in visits in Illinois “runs contrary” to that goal.
It’s unknown whether the surge will persist, or if was a temporary result of people with long-untreated conditions flocking to emergency rooms once they got insurance, the study said.
Do you know what happens when expensive ER visits rise? That’s right, overall costs for premiums, deductibles, and visits go up up up. Wasn’t Ocare supposed to decrease costs?
