Are doctors ready?
Six million people get Obamacare on Wednesday
By Sarah Kliff, WashPost, Updated: December 31 at 11:00 am
Wednesday is a big day for Obamacare. Because it's the day that at least 6 million Americans gain health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Except, health policy experts don't expect it to feel like a big day, at least not for the country's millions of health-care providers. They don't expect huddled masses showing up at their local emergency department when the clock strikes midnight and their insurance coverage kicks in. Nor do they think most Americans will find their doctors suddenly unavailable, swamped with new patients they need to see -- not on New Year's Day, and maybe not ever.
"People are going to be surprised by how little happens," says Ashish Jha, a Harvard professor who has studied Massachusetts's insurance expansion. "We're all thinking there will be this new flood of people. And there will be some people with pent up demand, but I think there's a lot more slack in the system than we give it credit for."
Researchers know that people do tend to use more health care when they have insurance. That point, proved most famously in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment of the 1970s, is pretty much undisputed.
(More here.)
By Sarah Kliff, WashPost, Updated: December 31 at 11:00 am
Wednesday is a big day for Obamacare. Because it's the day that at least 6 million Americans gain health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Except, health policy experts don't expect it to feel like a big day, at least not for the country's millions of health-care providers. They don't expect huddled masses showing up at their local emergency department when the clock strikes midnight and their insurance coverage kicks in. Nor do they think most Americans will find their doctors suddenly unavailable, swamped with new patients they need to see -- not on New Year's Day, and maybe not ever.
"People are going to be surprised by how little happens," says Ashish Jha, a Harvard professor who has studied Massachusetts's insurance expansion. "We're all thinking there will be this new flood of people. And there will be some people with pent up demand, but I think there's a lot more slack in the system than we give it credit for."
Researchers know that people do tend to use more health care when they have insurance. That point, proved most famously in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment of the 1970s, is pretty much undisputed.
(More here.)
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