Another Broken Obamacare Promise: "Contrary To Goals, ER Visits Rise Under Obamacare"
Today in Washington, D.C. - May 4, 2015
The House is not in session. They will will reconvene on at 11:30 AM tomorrow, May 5, 2015
The Senate will reconvene at 3 PM on Monday and resume consideration of the president’s veto message of S.J. Res. 8, a congressional resolution disapproving of the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) new rule allowing ambush union elections. A vote on overriding that veto is expected at 5:30 PM.
The Wall Street Journal reports, “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.
“A survey of 2,098 emergency-room doctors conducted in March showed about three-quarters said visits had risen since January 2014. That was a significant uptick from a year earlier, when less than half of doctors surveyed reported an increase. The survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians is scheduled to be published Monday.
“Medicaid recipients newly insured under the health law are struggling to get appointments or find doctors who will accept their coverage, and consequently wind up in the ER, ACEP said. Volume might also be increasing due to hospital and emergency-department closures—a long-standing trend.
“‘There was a grand theory the law would reduce ER visits,’ said Dr. Howard Mell, a spokesman for ACEP. ‘Well, guess what, it hasn't happened. Visits are going up despite the ACA, and in a lot of cases because of it.’”
This is yet another broken promise of Obamacare. Democrats argued that too many people were visiting emergency rooms and that their unpopular law would reduce the number of people doing that and therefore reduce some health care costs. Instead, as critics pointed out, increased demand without more doctors available led to longer wait times. And those long wait times have made some people go right back to emergency rooms.
Indeed, USA Today notes, “Such hikes run counter to one of the goals of the health care overhaul, which is to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by getting more people insured through Medicaid or subsidized private coverage and providing better access to primary care. A major reason that hasn't happened is there simply aren't enough primary care physicians to handle all the newly insured patients, says ACEP President Mike Gerardi, an emergency physician in New Jersey. ‘They don't have anywhere to go but the emergency room,’ he says. ‘This is what we predicted. We know people come because they have to.’”
According to the WSJ, “More than half of providers listed in Medicaid managed-care plans couldn’t schedule appointments for enrollees, according to a December report by the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Among providers who could offer appointments, the median wait time was two weeks, but more than a quarter of doctors had wait times of more than a month for an appointment. Many doctors don’t accept Medicaid patients because the state-federal coverage provides lower reimbursement rates than many private health-insurance plans. The waits for primary and specialty care by participating doctors appear to be leaving some Medicaid patients with the ER as the only option, according to ACEP.”
The added strain on emergency rooms is creating other problems. “‘We’re seeing a huge backlog in the ER because the volume has increased,’ said Ryan Stanton, an emergency-room doctor at Baptist Health Lexington in Kentucky. ‘This year we already have had to board people in the ER because of the sheer volumes,’ he said, referring to a practice of keeping patients in the ER until a hospital room becomes available. Dr. Stanton said ER volume rose about 10% in 2014 from 2013, and was up almost 20% in the first few months of this year.
“The ACEP survey also found that ERs are seeing sicker patients: About 90% of the doctors polled said the severity of illness has stayed the same or gotten worse. That might be explained in part by an aging population, newly insured people with multiple maladies, and people delaying care because they have high-deductible insurance plans.
“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.’”
USA Today adds, “Emergency room usage is bound to increase if there's a shortage of primary care doctors who accept Medicaid patients and ‘no financial penalty or economic incentive’ to move people away from ERs, says Avik Roy, a health care policy expert with the free market Manhattan Institute. ‘It goes to the false promise of the ACA,’ Roy says, that Medicaid recipients are ‘given a card that says they have health insurance, but they can't have access to physicians.’”
Tags: Senate, voting to override veto, Congress, Disapproved NLRB new rule, expanding big government, union control, Broken Obamacare Promise, Contrary To Goals, ER Visits Rise Under ObamacareTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
The House is not in session. They will will reconvene on at 11:30 AM tomorrow, May 5, 2015
The Senate will reconvene at 3 PM on Monday and resume consideration of the president’s veto message of S.J. Res. 8, a congressional resolution disapproving of the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) new rule allowing ambush union elections. A vote on overriding that veto is expected at 5:30 PM.
The Wall Street Journal reports, “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.
“A survey of 2,098 emergency-room doctors conducted in March showed about three-quarters said visits had risen since January 2014. That was a significant uptick from a year earlier, when less than half of doctors surveyed reported an increase. The survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians is scheduled to be published Monday.
“Medicaid recipients newly insured under the health law are struggling to get appointments or find doctors who will accept their coverage, and consequently wind up in the ER, ACEP said. Volume might also be increasing due to hospital and emergency-department closures—a long-standing trend.
“‘There was a grand theory the law would reduce ER visits,’ said Dr. Howard Mell, a spokesman for ACEP. ‘Well, guess what, it hasn't happened. Visits are going up despite the ACA, and in a lot of cases because of it.’”
This is yet another broken promise of Obamacare. Democrats argued that too many people were visiting emergency rooms and that their unpopular law would reduce the number of people doing that and therefore reduce some health care costs. Instead, as critics pointed out, increased demand without more doctors available led to longer wait times. And those long wait times have made some people go right back to emergency rooms.
Indeed, USA Today notes, “Such hikes run counter to one of the goals of the health care overhaul, which is to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by getting more people insured through Medicaid or subsidized private coverage and providing better access to primary care. A major reason that hasn't happened is there simply aren't enough primary care physicians to handle all the newly insured patients, says ACEP President Mike Gerardi, an emergency physician in New Jersey. ‘They don't have anywhere to go but the emergency room,’ he says. ‘This is what we predicted. We know people come because they have to.’”
According to the WSJ, “More than half of providers listed in Medicaid managed-care plans couldn’t schedule appointments for enrollees, according to a December report by the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Among providers who could offer appointments, the median wait time was two weeks, but more than a quarter of doctors had wait times of more than a month for an appointment. Many doctors don’t accept Medicaid patients because the state-federal coverage provides lower reimbursement rates than many private health-insurance plans. The waits for primary and specialty care by participating doctors appear to be leaving some Medicaid patients with the ER as the only option, according to ACEP.”
The added strain on emergency rooms is creating other problems. “‘We’re seeing a huge backlog in the ER because the volume has increased,’ said Ryan Stanton, an emergency-room doctor at Baptist Health Lexington in Kentucky. ‘This year we already have had to board people in the ER because of the sheer volumes,’ he said, referring to a practice of keeping patients in the ER until a hospital room becomes available. Dr. Stanton said ER volume rose about 10% in 2014 from 2013, and was up almost 20% in the first few months of this year.
“The ACEP survey also found that ERs are seeing sicker patients: About 90% of the doctors polled said the severity of illness has stayed the same or gotten worse. That might be explained in part by an aging population, newly insured people with multiple maladies, and people delaying care because they have high-deductible insurance plans.
“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.’”
USA Today adds, “Emergency room usage is bound to increase if there's a shortage of primary care doctors who accept Medicaid patients and ‘no financial penalty or economic incentive’ to move people away from ERs, says Avik Roy, a health care policy expert with the free market Manhattan Institute. ‘It goes to the false promise of the ACA,’ Roy says, that Medicaid recipients are ‘given a card that says they have health insurance, but they can't have access to physicians.’”
Tags: Senate, voting to override veto, Congress, Disapproved NLRB new rule, expanding big government, union control, Broken Obamacare Promise, Contrary To Goals, ER Visits Rise Under ObamacareTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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