Emergency room visits by Medi-Cal patients soaring, state data shows

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

California’s low-income residents continue to head straight for the emergency room — instead of their doctor’s office — for expensive treatment, a practice that the Affordable Care Act was supposed to curb.

Three years into Obamacare, new figures show, ER visits by the state’s Medi-Cal patients rose 44 percent from early 2014 to late 2016.

That’s pretty much the opposite of what architects of the nation’s health care law had predicted: The Obamacare provision expanding Medicaid was designed to get low-income people to start going to doctors in cost-efficient “managed care” plans.

But with a chronic shortage of doctors to treat the Golden State’s 4 million new Medi-Cal recipients, Mountain View resident Grace Bennett isn’t surprised the transition hasn’t gone as planned.

From the state that wants to give you single payer style health care!!! The struggles of central planning.