Mass. Health Care Disaster: Costly ER still draws many now insured

The Boston Globe reports:

Thousands of newly insured Massachusetts residents are relying on emergency rooms for routine medical care, an expensive habit that drives up healthcare costs and thwarts a major goal of the state's first-in-the-nation health insurance law.

The 2006 law requires nearly everyone to have health insurance, coverage the law's framers hoped would ease overuse of ERs as the newly insured went instead to primary care doctors for non-urgent health needs.

But a sizable number of patients who obtained state-subsidized insurance have continued to use the ER - at a rate 14 percent higher than Massachusetts residents overall, according to state data compiled at the Globe's request. Those state-subsidized patients with the lowest incomes, who formerly received free care in emergency rooms and now pay a nominal fee, are using ERs at a rate 27 percent higher than the state average.

When the government gets involved in an industry: higher prices are inevitable.Just look at housing and higher education.It's time to separate health care from state.