The Value of Medicaid

[Derechos]

Medicaid is under assault these days from nearly every direction. Governors complain that they cannot afford to put up their share of the money. Congressional Republicans led by Paul Ryan want to reduce the federal contribution by $771 billion over the next decade and shift more costs to the states and low-income Americans. President Obama has expressed willingness to cut Washington’s contribution by $100 billion over that period to help reduce the deficit.

Meanwhile, conservative critics of Medicaid — and of health care reform’s requirement to expand it — have made the outlandish claim that it provides such poor care that enrollees would be better off having no coverage.

They cite a few studies that seemed to show that, in some cases, patients on Medicaid had worse outcomes than those without any insurance. They claim this is because Medicaid pays so poorly that many doctors refuse to treat the patients, who are then unable to get care or go to the least skilled doctors.

Those claims have now been refuted by a new study of Oregon’s program, conducted under the leadership of Katherine Baicker, a Harvard health economics professor who was an adviser to President George W. Bush, and Amy Finkelstein, an economics professor at M.I.T. It found that Medicaid patients reported both better health and more financial stability than uninsured poor people.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/opinion/18mon1.html?ref=opinion

[elocs]

1. My 19 year old goddaughter is on Medicaid here in WI & gets excellent healthcare.

She was recently having some gastrointestinal problems and went to urgent care. She saw a doctor other than her own since her physician was gone and she requested to see a specialist, which she did. When she saw the specialist she told him that she wanted an x-ray and an ultrasound, which she got.

All of this at a local hospital and clinic that are part of the Mayo healthcare system. I'd say that was a lot better than no coverage at all.

[jwirr]

2. I have used medicaid for years to take care of my family until we

either started using medicare or insurance from work. I have never had a time that medicaid did not give us what we needed. My daughter who is severely disabled since birth is alive today because of the care she has gotten and still receives.

I suppose that there can be problems with any program if it is not administered correctly. Medicaid is administered by the states so when you have someone like Scott in Florida, Perry in Texas and Walker in Wisconsin then anything can go wrong.