Emergency visits are increasing despite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Jay Kaplan, MD, FACEP, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) said, “The reliance on emergency care remains stronger than ever. Just because you have health insurance does not mean you have access to timely medical care. Every shift, I treat patients who couldn’t access a primary care physician and had no choice but to come to the emergency department because their condition worsened dramatically. America has severe primary care physician shortages; many doctors will not accept Medicaid patients because Medicaid pays so inadequately.”

According to a 2015 ACEP poll, three-quarters of emergency doctors said that emergency visits had gone up since the implementation of the ACA. Most said that the availability of urgent care centers, retail clinics, and telephone triage lines have done little to reduce emergency visits.

There is strong evidence that Medicaid patients don’t have timely access to primary care and specialty care. The median wait time for Medicaid providers is two weeks, but over one-quarter have wait times of more than a month. More than half of providers listed by Medicaid managed care plans are not offering appointments to enrollees. This is despite an ACA provision that boosts pay to primary care doctors who treat Medicaid patients.