People with private health insurance coverage have better accessto primary care providers than do their counterparts who arecovered by Medicaid and Medicare.

But the generally accepted notion that the latter patientsfrequently go to emergency rooms for non-emergency treatment due toa lack of understanding about receiving treatment simply isn'ttrue. Easier access, not “differences in patient-perceived acuityfor patients covered by Medicaid [and Medicare] insurance,” isresponsible for this well-documented trend.

So say University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers whocrunched data on 4,606 patients gathered during the 2011 NationalHealth Interview Survey.

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Dan Cook

Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.