Friday, January 3, 2014
Oops! There goes another ObamaCare promise...
Oops! There goes another ObamaCare promise... One of the oft-repeated “selling points” for ObamaCare was that it would reduce the use of emergency rooms for non-emergency medical care. Oregon studied this notion, and the results are in. Emergency room use for non-emergency care goes up when ObamaCare's provisions are exercised. Oopsie! Megan McArdle has the facts and analysis...
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Obamacare, medi-cal locally (running for a couple years here now), on paper enables clients to get an appointment within 10-20 days. The actual wait time in Dec 2013 (before the full expansion kicked in), was 7 weeks...and that's just to see a gatekeeper (no doctor available for this, only a "nurse practitioner") who must give you permission to make another appt with someone to address the real issue. (additional weeks later) In acknowledging the failure to provide reasonable appointment times, they suggest "walk-in's" . The thing about walk-in appointments that the uninitiated are not told, is that you need to stand outside on the cement in the cold for at least an hour before the doors are scheduled to open. If you don't, when they finally call your name after hours of waiting, you are simplytold that there are no more slots available and to try again tomorrow. So you try again the next day, making sure to stand in the cold on the cement for at least an hour, then wait for the requisite hour for them to call your name, only to be told that "the provider did not come in today, there is nothing we can do, come back tomorrow". (substitutes or temporary replacements do not exist) It is my personal experience that 4 out of 5 attempts to see the "less expensive clinic doctors", both scheduled and walk-in, have resulted in nothing more than hours upon hours wasted. The ER, on the other hand, would result in hours of waiting, but there would at least be chairs to sit on in an indoor location, PLUS you are assured that the waiting will eventually result in being seen by a doctor. The only real question, is why anyone would expect use of the ER to fall.
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