Increase in Visits to Emergency Departments Persists Following Medicaid Expansion

Boston, MA –(ENEWSPF)–October 20, 2016.   Visits to hospital emergency departments (EDs) not only jumped by 40% in Oregon after Medicaid coverage was expanded there in 2008—but the increase persisted for at least two years, according to a new study led by health economists at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The study also found no evidence that the newly insured are more likely to substitute doctor’s…