Well, yeah

This one'll knock you over with a feather:

A new study of Medicaid beneficiaries in Oregon makes a strong version of this case. The study, published today in the journal Science, finds that adult Medicaid beneficiaries rely on emergency rooms about 40 percent more than similar uninsured adults.

"When you cover the uninsured, emergency room use goes up by a large magnitude," said Amy Finkelstein, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served as a lead investigator on the study, in an MIT press statement accompanying the study.

There were no exceptions to the trend. "In no case were we able to find any subpopulations, or type of conditions, for which Medicaid caused a significant decrease in emergency department use," said Finkelstein.

To the extent it's accomplishing anything at all, the Obamacare enrollment process is increasing the number of Medicaid recipients. So yeah, you'll have more people using the system and the doctors and hospitals will get less compensation for the increased traffic. It's a brilliant plan.

Meanwhile, MNSure is still having trouble getting its act together:

It's a new year, but MNsure continues to struggle with old problems involving its website and call center.

The application and account services portion of the state health exchange website was down Thursday afternoon until 6:30 p.m. for technical reasons as people continued trying to acquire health insurance. The trouble connecting with MNsure was particularly annoying for consumers who still aren't clear whether they have coverage.

Meanwhile, the average wait time for people calling MNsure for help Thursday was 62 minutes. The call center had received more than 2,500 calls as of 5 p.m.

The first website error was reported about 11 a.m. Thursday, and the application and account portion of the website went down about 20 minutes later, said John Schadl, a MNsure spokesman. It was still down after 5 p.m. Thursday.

The solution is obvious -- call MNSure once you get the emergency room. While you're waiting to see the overwhelmed ER doctors, you'll have plenty of time to be on hold.