MEDICAID - Upsurge in ER Visits by the Newly Covered, Trend or Hype

COMMENT:   Medicaid serves the poor, which do not have an experience with preventive medicine visits to a doctor, the DO have a long experience of using the Emergency Room.  So it will take some time to teach them to use their doctors vs the ER now that they are covered.

This study was taken much too soon to be definitive.

"Study on ER visits by people with Medicaid challenges theory they would go less" PBS Newshour 1/3/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  A study published in the journal "Science" this week found that low-income people with Medicaid insurance go to the emergency room about 40 percent more often than their uninsured counterparts do.  The study raised questions about the long-held theory that extending Medicaid coverage to more Americans would cut down on emergency room use.

It involved thousands of poor people in the Portland, Oregon, area, and it was part of the Oregon health insurance experiment.

Hari Sreenivasan takes the story from there.

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  Joining me to discuss this now report is Katherine Baicker.  She is the professor of health economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and was one of the authors of the report.