Study: more Medicaid means more emergency room visits

Use of emergency rooms will go up after Medicaid is expanded to cover millions more U.S. residents.

A study, published this week in the journal Science, found that emergency room visits went up 40 percent in Oregon in 2008, when some low-income residents in the state gained Medicaid coverage through a state lottery.

That data was compiled by researchers at Harvard University, according to a published report.

That finding contradicts proponents of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, who believe that the healthcare reform law’s expansion of Medicare will reduce emergency room visits.

The Science study is part of a larger analysis of Oregon’s Medicaid expansion six years ago, according to the report.