Massachusetts Health Care Reform Led To Increased ER Use
As the expansion of health care coverage becomes mandatory nationwide, people are looking to Massachusetts, which had already expanded health insurance coverage to nearly everyone in the state, for implications. The answer may be a source of dread for states like California, where high taxes and an onerous business climate have caused most of the middle class to disappear: Emergency Room visits went up, even as uninsured visits went down, and that means higher cost. The new report in the Annals of Emergency Medicine can't determine why they went up; perhaps people did not go before because they did not have coverage or perhaps people went more afterward because fewer private doctors accept their plans and the waiting period was too long. read more