Emergency Departments, Medicaid Costs, and Access to Primary Care — Understanding the Link

From the New England Journal of Medicine:

Clearly, something must be done to stop the hemorrhaging of state budgets. But ill-considered actions could make things worse. Medicaid was created to ensure that the poorest of the poor have access to care. Rather than confronting the challenge of inadequate access to primary care, Washington State’s Health Care Authority is attempting to restrict access to ED care. Instead of blocking the doors to the ED, policymakers in Washington State and elsewhere should draw the proper lessons from Billings’s research and unlock the doors to primary care.