WhatFinger


Just like keeping your plan, and your premium going down, the exchanges being fiscally sound, and . . .

Remember how ObamaCare was going to reduce ER visits for routine care? Yeah, about that . . .



Remember how ObamaCare was going to reduce ER visits for routine care? Yeah, about that
The theory seems pretty straightforward: If more people have health coverage, more people have access to quality care.
So pass a law that gets as many people as possible covered - no matter how you have to contort the economic models of the health care market to make it happen - and soon folks will be flocking to those preventive care appointments with their doctors. When the Democrats were trying to sell ObamaCare to the public back in 2009/2010 (they never succeeded at selling it, but they tried), this was one of the biggest selling points, especially the idea that people would stop using emergency rooms for care that should have been performed in a doctor's office. In fact, ObamaCare required all such preventive care appointments to be covered 100 percent by insurance, before your deductible kicked in. So how, exactly, did ER visits go up?
Doctors say emergency room visits have increased since the advent of Obamacare, undercutting one of the key selling points of President Obama’s health care law, which was supposed to ensure a healthier population by pushing consumers to rely on their primary physicians rather than emergency trips to the hospital.

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Three out of four ER doctors said they have seen a rise in the number of patients since January 2014, when Obamacare fully kicked in, according to a survey conducted by the American College of Emergency Physicians. More than a quarter of the doctors said they have seen a major surge, and 47 percent said the rise has been slight. The doctors said they fear a spike in visits could overwhelm their resources: Seven out of 10 said their departments aren’t prepared for a significant increase in patient volume. The biggest cause is a lack of primary care doctors to treat the increased number of patients with health care coverage, so the patients are turning to the emergency room instead — exactly what wasn’t supposed to happen. The everyone-will-get-preventive-care theory of ObamaCare failed for one simple reason: The economic contortions imposed by ObamaCare make it economically unfeasible for primary care physicians to make themselves available to patients. There are two reasons this happens. One is insurance companies - having been forced provide coverage at controlled premiums regardless of the insured party's health - have to cut costs somewhere, and one way they're doing it is by narrowing their networks. You can see any doctor you want if you pay the bill yourself. If you need it to be "free" - meaning an insurer pays the bill - you can only see the doctors they say you can see. The second reason is that the cost controls in ObamaCare are especially hitting doctors who handle Medicare/Medicaid patients, and a lot of them are refusing see such patients, or shutting down their practices altogether because they simply can't make enough money to make the practices worth operating. So sure, you can see any doctor you want, unless your insurer has moved that doctor out of network, or unless the doctor has stopped practicing because it makes no sense economically to continue doing so. The service is "free" provided you can find someone to provide it, and in the timeframe you need. ObamaCare has made that much harder to do, so the use of emergency rooms for non-emergencies is on the rise. Just like all the other promises they made about ObamaCare, it was utter nonsense and the problem they claimed to be solving is now even worse. You're "covered" - for all the damn good it's doing you. By the way, pro tip: If you go to a doctor's office and tell them you're going to self-pay, you can often get a discount as big as 60 percent without even having to ask. And if you do that, you really can see any doctor you want. It's not what Obama wants you to do, and it will cost you some out of pocket, but it's a way of taking control of your health care back into your own hands. Is that really worse than relying on a health insurer and the federal government to tell you who you can see, and when?


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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