ObamaCare - ER Visits Climb

The following editorial presents with just one the obscene facts regarding the Obamacare fiasco we the public, and professionals, are obligated to endure.

"Here's a survey that won't be posted at #BetterWithObamacare: Three-quarters of the nation's emergency room physicians say that visits to their ERs have gone up since implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

That's not what President Obama promised the American people when his vaunted health reform law was enacted five years ago. He was certain that ER visits would decrease once Americans started enrolling in Obamacare.

Well, some 6.7 million people were enrolled in Obamacare in 2014, according the Department of Health and Human Services. But not only did three in for ER doctors say the volume of emergency patients increased, one in for said the volume "increased greatly," according to a survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

There are myriad explanations for why the president's health care reform has failed to reduce ER visits. Not the least of the is that all too many primary care doctors refuse to accept Obamacare patients because of low reimbursement rates. Many of those patients wind up using the ER for primary care, which portends higher - rather than lower - overall health care costs.

Nowhere is that scenario more observable than here in the Golden State, where Covered California, the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange, is held out as a national model. a study published in the May issue of Health Affairs, found that health plans available through Covered California have narrower hospital networks than do commercial plans.

Blue Shield of California, which boasts some 3.4 million enrollees, provides a case in point. In 2014, its Covered California health plans included only 75 percent of the hospitals in its network and 60 percent of the doctors.

It's hard to imagine a higher participation rate inasmuch as hospitals and doctors that accept Covered California patients are reimbursed in some cased 30 percent less than those that do not.

That's why many Covered California patients are turning to the state's already overtaxed emergency rooms for such non-emergencies as coughs and colds, and cuts and burns that could b addressed at the local CVS or Walgreens.

We'd like to believe this unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act eventually will be resolved, and that the nation's emergency rooms will become less, rather than more, crowded.

But, to date, almost every promise made about the Affordable Care Act - that if you liked you health care plan you could keep it, that the typical premium would be lowered by up to $2,500.00, etc. - has proven to be false."

Last week, my office received a check, made out to me, in the amount of $0.00 - nothing else need be said.