“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aims for a delicate balance that even its champions acknowledge as highly challenging: Making medical services affordable for tens of millions of uninsured Americans, and yet restraining the expenditures needed to vastly expand coverage so that it shrinks, rather than swells, the looming deficits.”
“Thanks to ObamaCare, we’re going to end up subsidizing those folks anyway, through Medicaid. And Medicaid won’t reduce the use of emergency room care, which tends to be far more expensive than regular visits to the doctor. Just the opposite. Expanding coverage, especially through Medicaid, will almost certainly increase the total number of visits to the emergency room. That’s because Medicaid recipients use emergency room services more than any other class of individual.”
“A variety of research shows that Americans enrolled in Medicaid have less access to health care, and when they do receive care, the quality is often inferior to the care provided to other similar patients. This Heritage Foundation paper lays out the research, and shows how Medicaid is failing current enrollees and taxpayers and must be fundamentally reformed. The Medicaid expansion contained in ObamaCare will further weaken the program—hurting those who really need it, as well as unduly burdening the taxpayers who pay for it.”