Credit: Tim Lahan/The New York Times

When the 48-year-old man from Oregon didn’t have insurance, he felt he had no place to go but the emergency room. The man, who has diabetes, went to the emergency room often when he suffered from kidney stones. “Emergency rooms, from what I understand, they can never turn you away,” he said. “I mean, you don’t have much options when you don’t have insurance.”

Then, when he enrolled in the state of Oregon’s Medicaid plan, that all changed. He started seeing doctors in their offices, and stayed away from the emergency room: “I have had five appointments with my primary, one with the diabetic because they had me go to a diabetic educator, and then an appointment with my pharmacist, and then he does a phone-in thing with me every two weeks.”

His […]