Debunking Obamacare Cost savings

Democrats claim there will be a cost savings under Obamacare because people will use the emergency room less. They claim the uninsured go to the emergency room more often because they can't afford a primary care physician. Is this true? A recent PriceWaterhouse Coopers survey does not support that claim. They found Medicaid patients use the emergency room twice as much as the uninsured do. Also, Massachusetts, which has a "universal coverage" mandate, has one of the highest ER visit rates in the country. The Democrats plan to shove more people into Medicaid may dramatically increase ER visits and costs.

From the NY Post:

ERs are indeed dangerously overcrowded; having worked in a busy city ER for more than a decade, I can tell you that the "extra" patients interfere seriously with basic care. But the solution doesn't involve giving more people insurance coverage -- it requires turning more people into wise consumers.

A recent PriceWaterhouse Coopers survey found that half of patients who visited US emergency rooms over the last year did so unnecessarily....