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- Dec 9, 2009
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- Conservative
People without insurance aren't seen at doctors offices because they won't see you without ability to pay. And many fall in a place where they don't have insurance but don't qualify for assistance. So, there isn't any new entitlement program here. There is no public option. All that was done was open up medicaid to take more people and required everyone to have insurance. And a few more regulations. But no public option; no single payer.
And again, no one is ignoring anything. Merely pointing out your factual errors.
Here seems to be a problem that you refuse to acknowledge. Better wake up to reality!
Robert Samuelson:
The uninsured, it’s said, use emergency rooms for primary care. That’s expensive and ineffective. Once they’re insured, they’ll have regular doctors. Care will improve; costs will decline. Everyone wins. Great argument. Unfortunately, it’s untrue. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found. More than two-fifths of visits represented non-emergencies. Of those, a majority of adult respondents to a survey said it was “more convenient” to go to the emergency room or they couldn’t “get [a doctor's] appointment as soon as needed.” … Medicare’s introduction in 1966 produced no reduction in mortality; some studies of extensions of Medicaid for children didn’t find gains.