Total Health Care Costs Fall When Poor Are Provided Insurance: Study
The concept of support for universal health care is taboo among Republicans who scrutinize the Affordable Care Act -- dubbing it the "Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" -- and call for its repeal. But a new UC Irvine study challenges the GOP argument that the health care law is too costly, with data illustrating that health care costs on the whole fall when poorer, uninsured patients are provided with insurance.
"In a case study involving low-income people enrolled in a community-based health insurance program, we found that use of primary care increased but use of emergency services fell, and -- over time -- total health care costs declined," David Neumark, a co-author of the study, said in a release accompanying the findings.
The study -- which focused on uninsured people in Richmond, Virginia who fell 200 percent below the poverty line -- found that over three years, health care costs fell by almost 50 percent per participant, from $8,899 in the first year to $4,569 in the third after they received insurance. Participants who enrolled in health coverage made fewer trips to the emergency room, which are notorious for running up patient bills. Instead, insured participants went for more primary care visits.
"A lot of the debate about health care reform surrounds the issue of whether we're setting up something that's going to cost us more by increasing use of medical services or something that will cut costs through more appropriate and timely use of medical services," Neumark said in the release. "[O]ver time, costs can be reduced through increased use of primary care and reductions in emergency-department visits and hospital admissions, but it may take several years of coverage for substantive savings to occur."
(Insert standard 'It must have been a biased study' line here: ______________________________)
And I KNOW this has been mentioned before, but all those illegal aliens that everyone is so paranoid might get health care coverage?...They go to emergency rooms in hospitals--where they cannot be refused... Guess where the money comes from to pay for the emergency room care....? Guess which one is more expensive....?
Only makes sense because of the twisted nature of our system, just want to see a doctor, that costs you money, but going to the emergency room is free if you are poor.
It is like buying a Honda Fit will cost you money, but they are giving away free Cadillacs.
If you stopped providing the free emergency room care, health costs would decrease too.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Have a question for you LJ - is the cost of the "free" insurance being given to the poor included in the cost of providing their health care? I mean, sure, a visit to a primary care physician is going to cost less than going to the emergency room to have a sore throat looked at, that is just basic common sense.
Maybe what we need to do to lower the cost of health care is compel primary care physicians to provide such care free of charge instead of hospital emergency rooms and then still have the taxpayers pick up the tab - that would lower the cost of providing their health care by an equal amount, wouldn't it? I mean really, whether we pick up the tab for the insurance, which includes a certain amount of profit for the evil insurance company, which pays the doctor, along with the increased cost of our own insurance to cover the costs of paying for the actual health care costs that result from them now possessing the "free" insurance, wouldn't it simply be less expensive to pay the primary care physician directly and require that they see anyone regardless of their ability to compensate them for their services?
