Massachusetts’ Health Care System Has Resulted In A 9% Increase In Emergency Room Visits
Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to adopt the sort of health care reform Democrats now want to pass on the federal level. Massachusetts has a health insurance mandate, meaning that you are required to have health insurance, and a “public option” plan run by the government.
On the national level, Democrats also want to mandate health insurance and have a public option, be it a government-run plan or the health care equivalents of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in health care “co-ops.” Now, the liberals tell us that we need to mandate health insurance because all of the people who don’t have health insurance just end up going to the emergency room to get their care, running up expenses for the rest of us.
But if we use Massachusetts as an example for what will actually happen, the Democrats are wrong. Emergency room visits didn’t go down in Massachusetts as a result of their mandated health care/public option. Emergency room visits went up 9%.
The Independent Institute explains:
...the drumbeat claim that government health-care will be at least partially funded by “savings” from shifting people from expensive emergency room care to affordable preventative care can now be shelved as simply another piece of “all the misinformation that’s been spread over the past few months” President Obama criticized in his Sept. 9 speech to Congress.
I’ve never claimed that our current way of doing health care is perfect. But the problems with our health care right now are caused by government. And adding more government to the equation is only going to make things worse.
