Tag: emergency rooms

Shocking news: Obamacare still degrading Emergency Room Care.

Spoiler warning: this is, of course, not even remotely shocking. “Emergency-room visits continued to climb in the second year of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting the law’s supporters who had predicted a decline in traffic as more people gained access to doctors and other health-care providers.”  It was, in fact, not shocking last year, either. As I noted back then, increased access to insurance does not mean the same as increased access to medical care. Dumping people on Medicaid because the federal government – specifically, the Democrats that used to run the legislative branch / still running the executive branch of the federal government – has no idea as to how to create an inexpensive national healthcare system inevitably leads to those people doing what they can with what they have. Whether or not it strains the system:

Nicholas Vasquez, a medical director for an emergency department in Mesa, Ariz., said volume rose 5% in a year, representing about 10 more patients a day. The stress from bigger caseloads prompted some nurses to resign, he said. “Physicians are working more shifts—that pushes them a lot,” Dr. Vasquez said. “If they work too much, they get burnt out. For patients, it means longer waits.”

And, again: this was predicted, back in 2010.  We all knew that this was going to happen.  It’s just that the Democrats lied to the American people, like they lied about every other aspect of Obamacare.  And I have no compunctions whatsoever about saying I Told You So.  This was so blatantly inevitable that an English major with no professional experience in the health care field could see it coming.  Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid should be ashamed of themselves.  They are not, and never will be – but they should be.

They’re hurting people with this.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#Obamacare causing MORE Medicaid recipients to use emergency rooms.

AS John Ekdahl notes, we were told that the opposite was going to happen.  And yet, here we are: “Nationally, nearly half of ER doctors responding to a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians said they’ve seen more visits since Jan. 1, and nearly nine in 10 expect those visits to rise in the next three years. Mike Rust, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, said members statewide describe the same trend.”  Essentially, what is happening is that people on Medicaid are discovering that having access to a form of medical insurance does not mean the same as access to medical care.  Many doctors do not take Medicaid, and there’s not enough doctors anyway: but the emergency room is always there; as a result, not only are more people using ERs, they’re also using them for a wider range of services than, strictly speaking, emergency ones.

Continue reading #Obamacare causing MORE Medicaid recipients to use emergency rooms.

Obamacare to overwhelm emergency rooms.

(H/T: Big Government) Before we go any further: no, this is not a surprise to everyone. The Right was calling it health care rationing for a reason:

The new healthcare law will pack 32 million newly insured people into emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities.

A chief aim of the new healthcare law was to take the pressure off emergency rooms by mandating that people either have insurance coverage. The idea was that if people have insurance, they will go to a doctor rather than putting off care until they faced an emergency.

You know, English literature majors have a tacit understanding with medical doctors: they don’t write sestinas, and we don’t redesign the health care system while not even letting anybody see our work. Would that poly sci majors had the same deal going.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.