Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
Hopefully this will not be deleted as political, but you completely misunderstand the workings of the ACA. The ER's are in part overcrowded because people DON'T have insurance. ER's are required to provide evaluation without regard to the financial coverage of the patient. So the uninsured use the ER for primary care and minor illnesses. We still hear people say we don't need universal health insurance as poor people can get great free care in the ER, so everyone really already gets needed medical care. Once people have insurance, they will be able to go to primary care doctors and NP/PA's and not overcrowd the ER, and in fact get their care at much lower cost per incident. The ACA will hugely improve the ability of ER's to return to their mission of providing emergency care.
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The same situation might occur in terms of overall inpatient hospital beds. People that
are not proactive about their health may end up with more serious problems and have a higher chance of become an inpatient for something that they might have addressed with acute or chronic disease management with visits to the doctor's office.
ACA could have the effect of more beds available to the overall population because funding is available for uninsured people and they are more proactive in getting treatment.
I have heard that some private for profit hospitals might refuse to treat uninsured patients, other than perhaps to stabilize them in an immediate life threatening situation. Further more, I have heard that they usually send the uninsured on to a public or non-profit profit hospital that will treat them.
If that is true, then those unused beds in certain facilities that do not accept the uninsured, those might be opened up for use to those people, in effect reducing capacity strain on average.
I tend to expect that capacity strain may be more likely at some doctors' offices. Some areas may be worse than others. Apparently Texas has a very large uninsured population... no surprise there. They have been exploiting certain difference between states to try to attract certain businesses. But that is another topic!
We need to keep in mind, the uninsured only represent 10% of the population. That is a large number, but not an unworkable number!
I am sure there will be some snags along the way, but I am confident that it will all get sorted out and work. But it might take a few years and we may experience a few bumps in the road along the way.