http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/16/1299856/-Arkansas-hospitals-see-fewer-ER-visits-uninsured-patients?detail=email
What happens when you provide an affordable option for health coverage to a lot of lower-income people? You don't have as many uninsured people being forced to use their only option—the emergency room. That's pretty obvious, but we're still in a political world where the obvious good of a thing like more health coverage for more people has to be spelled out. So here it is, in Arkansas.
Preliminary data from a survey of acute care hospitals in Arkansas suggests a dramatic decline in the number of uninsured patients hospitals are seeing since the enactment of the private option, Surgeon General Joe Thompson and Bo Ryall, president of the Arkansas Hospital Association, testified before a legislative subcommittee today. [...]
Here are the three key statewide findings, comparing the first quarter of 2014 against the first quarter of 2013 […]:
* The total number of emergency department visits declined by 2 percent.
* Of those who did visit the emergency department, the number of uninsured patients was reduced by 24 percent.
* For people who required hospitalization, the number of uninsured patients was reduced by 30 percent.
understand this is working and none of the boogeyman things republicans blindly and irresponsibly lied about would happen have not happened, though we still here the rants of rebuked past exaggerations by them still kicking and screaming "this failure of a plan" one good thing at least we haven't heard train wreck and abomination lately.
