Several years ago, Oregon expanded its Medicaid services to a system very much like ObamaCare.
Oregon claimed, just like ObamaCare has claimed, that demand for Emergency Room services would go down dramatically when everyone had insurance.
What happened?
New people who were enrolled in Medicaid INCREASED their E.R. visits by 40%!
Z, in our own state (I believe you are in Washington also; correct me if wrong), that really didn’t happen in general when Medicaid rolls increased in 2008-2009. However, a small number of individuals were notorious at racking up excessive numbers of ER visits — some practically every day. The state implemented a plan to limit non-emergency ER visits to 3/year. But this was thrown out by a court I believe and the limit policy was dropped subsequently. The state now tries to vector those patients to urgent care clinics and/or mental health, whatever is appropriate.