Well, let's see: millions of Americans have had their health insurance - you know, the plans they liked - taken away from them; those same millions have been shafted by healthcare.gov; and few of those who think they've enrolled know if they actually have or not or have their insurance cards.
So, yeah, this study is about as gob-smacking as tackiness in a Miley Cyrus video:
The number of costly emergency room visits is set to soar under ObamaCare, according to a "gold standard" Harvard study, which directly contradicts claims by President Barack Obama that his healthcare law would cut ER trips.
The millions of people who have just been enrolled in Medicaid will go to ERs on a regular basis instead of their local doctors, according to the research.
Obama had said that his signature healthcare reform law would help cut back on government spending by reducing trips to the ER, the Daily Caller reports
Oops, there goes another rubber tree! Right alongside "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period" and "bending the cost curve" and "health care reform won't increase the deficit," and "We have to pass the bill to see what is in it." Okay, that last one is being horrifically borne out.
Harvard conducted the study in Oregon in 2008 after that state expanded its Medicaid program. It found that newly-insured Medicaid patients went to the ER 40% more than the uninsured.
The findings are the polar opposite of government calculations that these millions of new patients would pick lower-cost options for their healthcare, by going to their primary care physicians.
The study came during Oregon's Medicaid expansion six years ago when the state, with limited funds available, staged a lottery to decide who would get coverage. The researchers compared the trips to ER by those who won the Medicaid lottery and those who were not so lucky and remained uninsured.
The results showed that 25,000 Medicaid patients went to the emergency departments at Portland area hospitals 1.43 times over 18 months while those who were not insured only made 1.02 trips to the ER in the same time frame.
The #1 reason for this greater tendency on the part of Medicaid patients to go to the ER even for colds and flu? Aside from the fact that the ER is "free"? Prepare to not be stunned:
Even with the [Una]ffordable Care-Less] Act and possible Medicaid expansion in Virginia, the Free Clinic of Danville says they'll still have constant traffic.
Staff members say they've had numerous patients inform them that even with subsidies, they're still unable to afford health insurance premiums.
The bottom line? Barack Obama was peddling scenarios that depend upon ObamaCare recipients behaving in a way that every last facet and incentive of the UCLA discourages. You can't promise to give the public "free stuff" - particularly their health care - and expect personal fiscal responsibility from them. And those that are apt to still behave responsibly still can't get through the damned web portal and don't know if they have the coverage they signed up for, which they wouldn't have had to do at all if the plans they liked hadn't been canceled at Barack Obama's direct command in the name of "universal coverage" that is and always has been just one more Marxist myth. Besides, ObamaCare is taking coverage in the opposite direction.
My, but it would have been nice to have this study come out four years ago, wouldn't it? Wouldn't have changed anything, but still.
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