In the meantime, according to Bloomberg News, a 2009 survey by Merritt Hawkins & Associates, a recruiting and research firm in Irving, Texas, found that "the average waiting time to see a family-medicine doctor in Boston...is 63 days, the most among the 15 cities" surveyed. By comparison, in Miami, it was only seven days. The study noted that Boston's longer wait was "driven in part by the healthcare reform initiative" passed in 2006 in Massachusetts, upon which the Obama program is modeled. Bloomberg reported that "as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care."

Alan Goroll, a professor at Harvard Medical School, said that "the primary lesson of healthcare reform in Massachusetts is that you can't increase the number of insured unless you have a strong primary-care base in place to receive them. Without that foundation...Massachusetts has ended up with higher costs and people going to emergency rooms when they can't find a doctor."

Additionally, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the federal government's Health and Human Services Department, found that expanding insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million people who now lack it would create a demand for medical services that "could be difficult to meet initially...and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting and/or changes in providers' willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage."