"Universal" Care=More ER Use: An Old Lesson Relearned

Tomorrow is Independence Day, when we look back to the successful Revolution of 1776. I suppose we can't quite "celebrate" July 4, because we've surrendered much of that hard-won independence back to our home-grown political class.

Speaking of our political class, if I had a dime for every time President Obama or another of our betters announced that increasing coverage through more government programs would result in better access to primary care and less ER use, I'd be able to pay my taxes many times over.
There is no evidence of such an effect, as recent analyzes of the Massachusetts "reform" that introduced "universal" coverage have discussed (here and here). In a previous analysis of hospital ER use in California, I found the same effect. Indeed, ERs were far more likely to be jammed with people who had coverage, and whose symptoms could have been better handled in a primary-care physician's office, than the uninsured.

Will our rulers, who want to impose their vision of health "reform" on us, learn from this evidence? Fat chance!

Overcome by a wave of nostalgia for lost liberties, I decided to have a quick look at evidence of the effect of "universal" health care in the scholarly literature:

Exhibit A: an article from 1973 reporting a survey of Montreal households conducted over 12 months in 1969 and 1970, just before "universal" coverage was imposed by the provincial government of Quebec in 1971. The survey did conclude that higher-income households used more medical services than lower-income households did. Furthermore, 4/5ths of ER visits were for non-urgent reasons.

Sounds like those folks needed "universal" coverage, right? Wrong.

Exhibit B: the same authors published a subsequent article in 1978, which reported that ER visits increased by 14% annually in the five years after "universal" coverage versus 7% in the five years prior. Before "universal" coverage, 33% of patients surveyed had attempted to contact a physician before going to the ER and 63% were successful. After "universal" coverage, 39% of patients had attempted to contact a physician but only 38% were successful. Most of the increase in coverage happened through the ER, not primary-care doctors.

Three decades later, Massachusetts is learning the same lesson - or not.