Crowded Care: How Health Reform Might Affect Emergency Rooms

How will health reform affect the nation's emergency rooms? The AP's Carla K. Johnson provides a glimpse of the future in this story, and it's crowded. She writes:

Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can't find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation's new health law.

That might come as a surprise to those who thought getting 32 million more people covered by health insurance would ease ER crowding. It would seem these patients would be able to get routine health care by visiting a doctor's office, as most of the insured do.

But it's not that simple.

Johnson goes on to point out some of reasons we might see more ER crowding than already exists: not enough primary care doctors to serve the newly insured; an increase in Medicaid patients who are primary users of ERs, and the fact that many people who use ERs are already insured.

What are emergency rooms in your community expecting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.