Posted on 10/19/2004 10:27:19 PM PDT by crushelits
WASHINGTON - A new study on emergency rooms disputes the common wisdom that the poor and uninsured are filling them up.
In fact, more than 80 percent of patients seen in emergency rooms have health insurance and a usual source of health care such as a primary care physician, doctors reported on Tuesday.
"Contrary to popular perception, individuals who do not have a usual source of care are actually less likely to have visited an emergency department than those who have such care," said Dr. Ellen Weber, an professor in the division of emergency medicine at the University of California San Francisco, who led the study.
For the study, Weber and colleagues looked at interviews of nearly 50,000 adults visiting emergency departments in 2000 and 2001.
People without health insurance were no more likely to have had an emergency visit than those with private health insurance, they told a meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians (news - web sites).
People without a regular doctor or clinic were 25 percent less likely to have had an emergency visit than those with a private doctor, the researchers found.
Their study, also published in the Annals of Emergency medicine, found that 83 percent of emergency department visits were made by people who had a doctor, clinic or were members of a health maintenance organization.
Eighty-five percent had medical insurance and 79 percent had incomes above the poverty level.
"The mistaken belief that emergency departments are overcrowded by a small, disenfranchised portion of the U.S. population can lead to misguided policy decisions and a perception by hospital administrators that emergency patients are not as valuable to the institution as patients having elective surgery," Weber said in a statement.
"But our findings indicate that emergency departments serve as a safety net, not just for the poor and uninsured, but for mainstream Americans, and in particular those with serious and chronic illness."
MAJORITY HAVE INSURANCE
A spokesman for the American Hospital Association said he was studying the report but added, "That is not surprising because a majority of people have insurance."
An estimated 45 million Americans lack health insurance, but that leaves 85 percent of the population with coverage, either public or private.
Hospitals have long complained that their emergency rooms are overcrowded. Between 1992 and 2002, emergency department use climbed 23 percent, from 89.8 million visits to 110 million visits.
The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires any hospital taking part in Medicare -- the state-federal health care insurance program for the elderly and disabled -- to provide "appropriate medical screening" to anyone showing up at an emergency room and asking for it.
Hospitals say the rules have burdened their emergency departments with poor and uninsured patients seeking care for everyday conditions. Many have closed emergency facilities in recent years.
"Many insurance programs, and particularly public and private HMOs, require beneficiaries to have a primary care physician, which may be expected to improve overall health and health care," Weber said.
"But the continued rise in emergency visits implies that such programs have not had a substantial impact on overall emergency department use."
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School (news - web sites) and Physicians for a National Health Program agreed. "Many emergency room users have chronic health problems such as congestive heart failure," said Woolhandler, who advocates for universal national health insurance.
Yeah, but that other 20% is the killer.
This article will come as a great relief to all those Los Angeles ERs and hospitals closed because of illegal Mexicans flooding the ERs with uncompensated care.
Gee, things sure have changed since June 25, 2004!
Now-now. Can't go confusing the Leftists with inconvenient facts! ; )
lol
Is that nationally?? Maybe they should just try doing the study in LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and El Paso.
All I can say is that if 80% of emergency room patients are insured, why are emergency rooms closing around California. I wonder what the percentage of people in Calif. are uninsured? Virtually all of them go the local emergency room for a headache. And virtually all of them aren't suppose to be here.
Garbage.
According to numbers the largest number uninsured are 18 - 39 and choose to use money for recreation instead of insurance; most unisured make over $50K a year.
Uninsured doesn't mean without healthcare -- the poor get healthcare through Medicaid and the elderly through Medicare. A large number of the elderly have secondary policies and the poor elderly have Medicaid secondary.
So, if these numbers are correct and 75% of emergency room visits have insurance -- I assume then a large number of hospitalized have insurance -- so what exactly is driving insurance up by double digits when they are outsourcing claims processing overseas? and most insurance is handled electronically these days? CEO Salaries????
I cannot imagine any business giving away 20% of its product and surviving.
Try it with a restaurant, for example, and see how long you can stay open.
Whoever authored this study has no concept of economics.
Two things. Aging population and diseases that used to be fatal are now very expensively treated. The dichotomy is that health care is so good now that many people that would have died 20 years ago now have treatments that keep them alive for decades but at a very high cost.
That too but with the advent of transplantation of kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs along with medications that control everything from diabetes to high blood pressure along with longer and longer cancer remissions people are just living longer than they did a short time ago but the cost of keeping them alive is extremely expensive. This is not a bad thing BUT it is a reality and it is costly.
Down here on the border in south Texas more than 75% of the total health care is paid by the government. Less than 25% of the people have health insurance.
So, 110 MILLION visits; that leaves around 20 MILLION uninsured "visitors". Take the lowest possible cost of an emergency room visit (maybe $500), and you will begin to see the problem. Of course, many of these visits will end up in tens of thousands of dollars in costs...so add accordingly.
Of course, the article also says that people that ARE covered are covered by private or public insurance. So add to that AGAIN, the difference between what the government pays, and what the hospitals actually charge; for those who are covered by "public" means.
We all pay the difference.
Plus, insurance companies invest money in the market. If they guess wrong...well we can't have them losing money because of their own mistakes now, can we?
New medicines and treatments; tech. innovations; the ever-increasing cost of R and D; a fat, sedentary population that has little interest in prevention. Add a flood of illegal immigrants and you get our current situation.
Where is the site of the report? I'd like to read between the lines...
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Now we are to subsidize the crisis with phone taxes? We pay one way or another!
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