Remember this
gem from House Speaker John Boehner when he was forced to acknowledge that
Obamacare had covered a lot of people?
"Giving people Medicaid insurance is almost like giving them nothing, because you can't find a doctor that will see Medicaid patients, Boehner added. "And so where do they end up? The same place they used to end up, in the emergency room."
Plenty of evidence argues otherwise, including a
a study from the Commonwealth Fund of people who had coverage through the law in both private plans and Medicaid and were having no problem finding a primary care doctor. But here's more: a
brand-new study out of Michigan to test access for new Medicaid patients. Guess what they discovered?
"It is noteworthy that Medicaid appointment availability in Michigan increased rather than decreased during a period when approximately 350,000 adults entered the Medicaid system and the number of primary care providers likely remained stable," concluded the authors.
Yep, it got easier for Medicaid recipients to get an appointment with a primary care doctor after expansion.
Specifically, they "found that appointment availability increased 6 percentage points for new Medicaid patients and decreased 2 percentage points for new privately insured patients, compared to availability before the expansion. Wait times remained stable, at 1–2 weeks for both groups."
So there you go. In Michigan, at least, new Medicaid patients and existing Medicaid patients are having no issues getting access to a doctor when they need to. That's just one state, but this survey just adds to the evidence we already have seen that Obamacare is increasing access not just to insurance coverage, but to actual health care.