{"id":19869,"date":"2014-01-03T14:52:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T19:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=19869"},"modified":"2014-01-16T17:09:33","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T22:09:33","slug":"study-obamacare-medicaid-expansion-could-increase-er-visits-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/19869\/study-obamacare-medicaid-expansion-could-increase-er-visits-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: ObamaCare Medicaid Expansion Could Increase ER Visits, Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new study by a top flight team of academic researchers destroys the Obama administration\u2019s premise for expanding Medicaid coverage.<\/p>\n<p>The report, authored by researchers at MIT, Harvard and Columbia, focuses on an Oregon experiment to expand Medicaid that predates Obamacare by about five years. The findings show that giving Medicaid to an uninsured person increases the recipient\u2019s visits to the emergency room up to 40 percent. This \u201cruns counter to government assumptions that the newly insured would choose lower-cost options for care, such as doctors\u2019 offices,\u201d says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/news\/2014-01-02\/obamacare-s-medicaid-expansion-may-create-oregon-like-er-strain \" target=\"_blank\">Businessweek<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/theapothecary\/2014\/01\/02\/new-oregon-data-expanding-medicaid-increases-usage-of-emergency-rooms-undermining-central-rationale-for-obamacare\/ \" target=\"_blank\">Avik Roy<\/a> speculates that one of the reasons for why Medicaid enrollment increases unnecessary ER visits is that many doctors are refusing to accept new Medicaid patients because the federal government pays less than private insurance for the same service. Difficulty in obtaining primary care results in using the ER as the provider of first resort.<\/p>\n<p>If the Oregon study is an accurate predictor of Medicaid patient behavior under Obamacare \u2013 and there is every reason to believe it is \u2013 then federal spending is about to soar.<\/p>\n<p>With Obamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion already enrolling 3.9 million new people, the higher costs associated with emergency room visits could balloon actual spending far above the Obama administration\u2019s current projections.<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, previous research from Oregon shows that moving from no insurance to Medicaid <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/theapothecary\/2013\/05\/02\/oregon-study-medicaid-had-no-significant-effect-on-health-outcomes-vs-being-uninsured\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>does not improve health outcomes<\/em><\/a>. Instead, it shifts the cost of care from the beneficiary to the taxpayer (and the provider who either eats the diminished compensation or passes it on to other patients).<\/p>\n<p>So, to recap, Obamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion looks very likely to increase costs while having zero impact on the health of the beneficiaries.<\/p>\n<p>Let this be a confirmation that the decision by governors who chose not to expand Medicaid under Obamacare was the sensible, scientifically proven way to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study by a top flight team of academic researchers destroys the Obama administration\u2019s premise for expanding Medicaid coverage. The report, authored by researchers at MIT, Harvard and Columbia, focuses on an Oregon experiment to expand Medicaid that predates Obamacare by about five years. The findings show that giving Medicaid to an uninsured person [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3308,1829,232,35],"class_list":["post-19869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-health","tag-insurance","tag-medicaid","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19869"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19875,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869\/revisions\/19875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}