{"id":1523,"date":"2009-10-22T10:18:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T14:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=1523"},"modified":"2009-10-22T11:08:18","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T15:08:18","slug":"individual-mandate-increased-er-visits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/1523\/individual-mandate-increased-er-visits\/","title":{"rendered":"Individual Mandate Increased ER Visits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite claims from some on the left, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the_press_office\/remarks-by-the-president-to-a-joint-session-of-congress-on-health-care\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">including the White House<\/span><\/a>, that health care reform will lower visits to the ER, new statistics from Massachusetts prove that individual mandates could actually increase ER visits.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ama-assn.org\/amednews\/2009\/10\/19\/prsf1020.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">A survey<\/span><\/a> of Massachusetts emergency physicians found that 42% said emergency care had \u201csomewhat increased,\u201d while 22% of respondents said ER care had \u201csignificantly increased.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The main platform of health care reform in Massachusetts is an individual health care mandate for virtually all residents.\u00a0  (Residents who fail to obtain coverage can face <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mass.gov\/?pageID=dorterminal&amp;L=7&amp;L0=Home&amp;L1=Businesses&amp;L2=Help+%26+Resources&amp;L3=Legal+Library&amp;L4=Technical+Information+Releases&amp;L5=TIRs+-+By+Year%28s%29&amp;L6=2007+Releases&amp;sid=Ador&amp;b=terminalcontent&amp;f=dor_rul_reg_tir_tir_07_18&amp;csid=Ador\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">fines of up to $912<\/span><\/a>.)\u00a0  Dr. Angela Gardner, President of the American College of Emergency Physicians, noted, \u201cThe idea that emergency departments are filled with people who don\u2019t need to be there is simply not true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thus, despite increased access to care in Massachusetts, ER\u2019s across the commonwealth are still inundated with patients.\u00a0  This finding isn\u2019t too surprising.\u00a0  Sure enough, people will actually go out of their way to save their lives, even if government tries to get in the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite claims from some on the left, including the White House, that health care reform will lower visits to the ER, new statistics from Massachusetts prove that individual mandates could actually increase ER visits. A survey of Massachusetts emergency physicians found that 42% said emergency care had \u201csomewhat increased,\u201d while 22% of respondents said ER [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,159,44],"class_list":["post-1523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-health-care","tag-massachusetts","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}