Obamacare insurance expansion tied to faster emergency care

Some low-income U.S. patients may have an easier time choosing a hospital for emergency care thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), a new study suggests.

Under the ACA, also known as Obamacare, some U.S. states expanded coverage through Medicaid – a joint federal and state insurance program for the poor – starting in 2014.

That year, average travel times to the hospital for emergency department (ED) care dropped by 0.9 minutes in 17 states where Medicaid coverage expanded, while it remained little changed in 19 states that didn’t make more people eligible for these benefits, the study found.

One limitation of the study is that it only looked at for-profit, investor-owned hospitals, which makes it hard to say how coverage changes may have played out at nonprofit or public hospitals, the authors note.

It’s also possible that the lower travel times for expansion states were mostly reduced by previously uninsured patients in cities who gained coverage that let them seek care closer to home, rather than truly statewide reductions, said Dr. Mahshid Abir, IHPI member and health policy researcher at the University of Michigan.