Who is Going to Provide the Extra Care?
Economic studies suggest that people with health insurance consume twice as much health care as those without insurance. So, if ObamaCare results in 32 million additional insured, then 32 million people are going to try to double the amount of care they are getting. Yet the health reform bill provides funding for not one new doctor, not one new nurse, nor any other paramedical personnel. (See Wall Street Journal article on coming doctor shortages here.)
This is an easy question to answer. No one is going to provide the extra care. The promise of greater access to care was an empty promise from day one. I hope the American people aren’t buying it.
Actually, some of the previously uninsured may get more care — but it will be at the expense of others. The total amount of care is unlikely to rise.
From John’s Posting: “Economic studies suggest that people with health insurance consume twice as much health care as those without insurance”
The need for health care is based on health status. Does that mean that disease processes know about the insurance status of individuals? Or does it mean that people without health insurance aren’t getting needed health care.
The “need” for health care is often subjective. Subjective evaluations change depending on out-of-pocket costs.
For example, my child has a badly sprained ankle. Bad sprains and breaks are often indistinguishable. Do I go for an immediate X-ray and orthopedic evaluation with MRI or do I wait a few days to see what happens?
That’s the great irony: You have “coverage” but you have to wait.
Surely there’s some sort of free-market, cashing-paying way to get around all of this. Perhaps we see a segment of doctors that stop accepting insurance patients at all and only accept cash?
artk,
One other option is that people with insurance are getting/requesting/demanding more care than they actually “need.”
If you figure an insured person is never paying the total price of the actual care, they can consume more care with less finaicial burden and have incentives to actually see a physician needed or not, than someone who is paying for the care themselves.
Potentially a obvious case the economic moral hazard.
Many of the uninsured self-selected to be that way because they didn’t necessarily want nor did they expect to need the expensive care that insurance coverage would provide. The real bottleneck will be getting in to see a primary care physician.
On average, Americans only pay 10 cents on the dollar when they visit their physician. So, economic theory suggests newly insured patients’ demand for physician services will 10 times what it otherwise would be when required to pay out-of-pocket. Of course other factors may temper that demand – such as the inconvenience of actually seeing a doctor (since it will be so hard to get an appointment). This will especially be true of the 16 million newly eligible for Medicaid.
A recent study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine found that 85% of Emergency Room frequent fliers (four or more visits per year) have health insurance. More than half of which are insured through Medicare or Medicaid.