If there is a doctor in the house, or someone who knows where to track these kinds of statistics, please confirm or deny the following (which I got from two doctors, but the plural of anecdotes is not necessarily data…): visits to hospital emergency rooms in the U.S. are down sharply since mid-September?!

This strikes me as odd for the following reasons.

1. You would expect health (both actual and perceived) to worsen with the kind of stress that comes in economic crisis.  This was definitely the experience in parts of East-Central Europe in the 1990s, and arguably it has happened elsewhere during similarly intense episodes.

2. Visits to the emergency room obviously can be expensive if you don’t have insurance, but the stories I hear sugggest that visits are down also for people with insurance.

Could it be that the fall in consumption, picked up in the 3rd quarter GDP numbers that came out last week, is not just about going out less, buying fewer clothes, and staying away from imported goods?  Is it possible that we are actually taking less good care of ourselves and – quite likely – storing up more health problems for the not-too-distant future?

Comments on this important issue would most welcome.

Update (November 4): Laura Conoway, of Planet Money, has dug into this more – what she hears through the American College of Emergency Room Physicians is that visits are not down, but people are really struggling to afford insurance and medication.

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