People who have followed my articles regarding Medicaid and Medicaid expansion will recall that five years ago, and early in the game, I sited the \u201cOregon Medicaid Experiment\u201d as proof that the claims of The Affordable Care ACT (Obama Care), specifically as they were applied to Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, were untrue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a series of letters to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) the Oregon Experiment has again been cited as proof that the claims that continue even today that \u201cyou can keep your doctor and you can keep your plan\u201d and that Medicaid and Medicaid expansion will improve health care outcomes\u2014remember access, quality costs(?), are completely unfounded and are today proven to be not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Milton Friedman famously stated, \u201cthe road to hell is paved with good intentions\u201d. A recent letter reviewed in the June 17th (WSJ), written by John Cogan of Stanford, California, restated the claims of the \u201cOregon Experiment\u201d, while proving Dr. Friedman\u2019s claim of \u201cgood intentions\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To refresh the memories of our readers the OREGON MEDICAID EXPERIMENT, Medicaid eligible patients were assigned to Medicaid coverage and no coverage at all. Researchers found little evidence that coverage improved medical outcomes. Recipients in the Oregon study like Idaho legislators valued their coverage at 20-30% of its cost to taxpayers. Subsidizing Medicaid coverage to able bodied adults instead of offering them coverage at their own expense creates economic frictions and a misallocation of state resources. They also found that over 50% of people eligible for enrollment in expansion programs chose not to enroll unless they receive a 100% subsidy. Talk about a disincentive and the creation of dependency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most important point brought out in Mr. Cogan\u2019s response is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut the research is more mixed than they suggest. As the paper\u2019s authors point out, their finding of lower mortality among able-bodied adults may have come at the expense of higher mortality among disabled people, as might be expected if states shifted resources in response to the 100% subsidies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That quote precisely and accurately points out the case that I presented several years ago. By taking away resources from the people that Medicaid was supposed to help\u2014those living on the margins who through no fault of their own cannot take care of their own or their families health care needs\u2014the ones that Medicaid was originally designed to help, are the ones most placed in jeopardy by Medicaid Expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only thing Medicaid expansion has done is to make the conscience of progressive liberals and progressive Republicans feel good while they don\u2019t get their own hands dirty. The social contract should be between we the people who see that those on the margins are actually being hurt by Medicaid expansion, and those who need help. The symbiotic collusion between large health care provider networks and legislators and government agency heads serves only the large provider systems\u2014not patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who have followed my articles regarding Medicaid and Medicaid expansion will recall that five years ago, and early in the game, I sited the \u201cOregon Medicaid Experiment\u201d as proof that the claims of The Affordable Care ACT (Obama Care), specifically as they were applied to Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, were untrue. In a series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1051],"tags":[20,1370],"class_list":["post-18656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-john-livingston","tag-healthcare","tag-medicaid","cat-1051-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18658,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656\/revisions\/18658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}