Universal Health Care in the EMS setting

[CBEMT]

take for example, Massachussetts, they have government mandated healthcare - it may not 100% be provided by Uncle Mass but they mandate that you have health insurance or I belive you get a fine.

I'd be curious to see what EMS's call volume was before and after this was implemented.

Costly ER still draws many now insured

Thousands of newly insured Massachusetts residents are relying on emergency rooms for routine medical care, an expensive habit that drives up healthcare costs and thwarts a major goal of the state's first-in-the-nation health insurance law.

The 2006 law requires nearly everyone to have health insurance, coverage the law's framers hoped would ease overuse of ERs as the newly insured went instead to primary care doctors for non-urgent health needs.

But a sizable number of patients who obtained state-subsidized insurance have continued to use the ER - at a rate 14 percent higher than Massachusetts residents overall, according to state data compiled at the Globe's request.