The Homa Files

Punch line: Being on Medicaid was associated with the longest length of stay, the most total hospital costs, and the highest risk of death.

According to the WSJ …

Dozens of recent medical studies show that Medicaid patients suffer for it.

Foe example, 2010 study of 893,658 major surgical operations performed between 2003 to 2007, published in the Annals of Surgery, found that being on Medicaid was associated with the longest length of stay, the most total hospital costs, and the highest risk of death.

In all of these studies, the researchers controlled for the socioeconomic and cultural factors that can negatively influence the health of poorer patients on Medicaid.

So why do Medicaid patients fare so badly?

Payment to providers has been reduced to literally pennies on each dollar of customary charges because of sequential rounds of indiscriminate rate cuts, like those now being pursued in states like New York and Illinois.

As a result, doctors often cap how many Medicaid patients they’ll see in their practices.

Meanwhile, patients can’t get timely access to routine and specialized medical care.

Source: WSJ, Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All, March 10, 2011. 

This entry was posted on March 15, 2011 at 6:53 am and is filed under Health Care / Medical Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.