Logo

Log In Sign Up |  An official publication of: American College of Emergency Physicians
Navigation
  • Home
  • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
  • Clinical
    • Airway Managment
    • Case Reports
    • Critical Care
    • Guidelines
    • Imaging & Ultrasound
    • Pain & Palliative Care
    • Pediatrics
    • Resuscitation
    • Trauma & Injury
  • Resource Centers
    • mTBI Resource Center
  • Career
    • Practice Management
      • Benchmarking
      • Reimbursement & Coding
      • Care Team
      • Legal
      • Operations
      • Quality & Safety
    • Awards
    • Certification
    • Compensation
    • Early Career
    • Education
    • Leadership
    • Profiles
    • Retirement
    • Work-Life Balance
  • Columns
    • ACEP4U
    • Airway
    • Benchmarking
    • Brief19
    • By the Numbers
    • Coding Wizard
    • EM Cases
    • End of the Rainbow
    • Equity Equation
    • FACEPs in the Crowd
    • Forensic Facts
    • From the College
    • Images in EM
    • Kids Korner
    • Medicolegal Mind
    • Opinion
      • Break Room
      • New Spin
      • Pro-Con
    • Pearls From EM Literature
    • Policy Rx
    • Practice Changers
    • Problem Solvers
    • Residency Spotlight
    • Resident Voice
    • Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine
    • Sound Advice
    • Special OPs
    • Toxicology Q&A
    • WorldTravelERs
  • Resources
    • ACEP.org
    • ACEP Knowledge Quiz
    • Issue Archives
    • CME Now
    • Annual Scientific Assembly
      • ACEP14
      • ACEP15
      • ACEP16
      • ACEP17
      • ACEP18
      • ACEP19
    • Annals of Emergency Medicine
    • JACEP Open
    • Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Medical Editor in Chief
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Awards
    • Authors
    • Article Submission
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Information

Medicare-for-All Might Not Cause Surge in Hospital Use

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) | on July 29, 2019 | 0 Comment
Latest News
  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
Print-Friendly Version

Medicare-for-all and other versions of universal coverage being proposed for the U.S. by several presidential hopefuls wouldn’t necessarily lead more people to seek hospital care, a new analysis suggests.

You Might Also Like
  • ACEP Leadership Team Meets with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Joint Commission, American Hospital Association, and More
  • ACEP Opposes Proposed Rule Regarding Immigrants, Medicare, Medicaid
  • Insurance Status Tied to Likelihood of Hospital Transfer

Critics of Medicare-for-all have raised concerns that it might lead to a surge in use of inpatient services, because people with comprehensive health insurance tend to use more hospital care than people with bare-bones benefits, researchers noted online in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Some previous studies suggest this surge might materialize, but other studies also suggest that hospital use only rises dramatically when more beds are available and staffed for an anticipated spike in utilization.

To see how universal coverage might play out today, researchers looked at the two biggest expansions of health benefits in U.S. history: the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid from 1966 and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014.

Using data from the National Health Interview Survey (1962 to 1970), they found that hospital discharges averaged 12.8 per 100 people in the three years before implementation of Medicare and Medicaid and 12.7 per 100 people in the three years afterward.

And based on data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (2008 to 2015), with the ACA, discharges dropped from 9.4 per 100 people in the three years before the law to 9.0 per 100 people in the three years afterward.

“Contrary to expectations, overall hospitalizations didn’t rise after both expansions—suggesting that universal coverage expansions like Medicare-for-all also won’t cause a surge in hospitalizations,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney, lead author of the study and president of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization that advocates for Medicare-for-all.

The expectation when previously uninsured people get health coverage is that they will start using every kind of care, including hospital care, driving up costs, Gaffney, also an instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said by email.

In the current study, while some populations did increase their use of hospital care, the increases were offset by reductions among others.

For example, after the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, hospital use increased among elderly and low-income persons but decreased among younger and higher-income persons.

This suggests that major coverage expansions result in shifts in who uses the hospital, but not increases in overall hospital use, the study team concludes.

One limitation of the study is that it only looked at hospital care—which only accounts for about one-third of total healthcare spending. These coverage expansions might mean something different for outpatient or clinic visits, or prescription drug use, which are also big drivers of health spending.

Pages: 1 2 | Single Page

Topics: InsuranceInsurance CoverageMedicare

Related

  • ACEP 2025 Leadership & Advocacy Conference—Showing Up on Behalf of EM!

    June 5, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • June 2025 News from the College

    June 5, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • Medicare’s Reimbursement Updates for 2024

    January 13, 2024 - 0 Comment

Current Issue

ACEP Now: June 2025 (Digital)

Read More

No Responses to “Medicare-for-All Might Not Cause Surge in Hospital Use”

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*
*

Wiley
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertise
  • Cookie Preferences
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 2333-2603