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We hear that one of the ways to reduce medical costs by providing government insurance is that it will reduce the use of the ER. In a a one-of-a-kind study, this has been demonstrated to be false. In fact, the opposite was found.
Whether we decide this is the way we need to move forward or not is one thing, the costs for doing it, and how we are going to pay for it, is another.
Emergency Room Use Stays High In Oregon Medicaid Study : Shots - Health News : NPR
Whether we decide this is the way we need to move forward or not is one thing, the costs for doing it, and how we are going to pay for it, is another.
Emergency Room Use Stays High In Oregon Medicaid Study : Shots - Health News : NPR
But the study also found Medicaid enrollees increased their emergency room visits by 40 percent over the first 15 months.
"That was a surprise to a lot of folks," says Wright.
It was widely believed that having insurance would encourage people to get routine medical care in doctors' offices or clinics, instead of waiting until they have more serious symptoms and have to head to the ER, where care is most expensive.
After those early findings were published, health care analysts scrambled to explain why the number of ER visits didn't decline. Some thought it was a reflection of pent-up demand from people who hadn't seen a doctor in years because they didn't have insurance.
...
But Wright, one of the study's authors, says he and his colleagues have now studied two years of data — and that's not what they're finding.
"There was no sign that this [ER] use went down," he says. "So this idea of pent-up demand sort of fading away — at least in the first couple of years, it didn't happen."