Sunday, November 24, 2013

It is Healthier to be Uninsured than on Medicaid



As the American people are being stampeded from their "substandard" insurance policies into a more expensive and/or taxpayer subsidized one that doesn’t pertain to their needs, many are finding out that they can’t afford it.  Those unfortunates are being herded into the Medicaid system.

Talk to anyone who is on Medicaid.  You’ll find out there are too many people competing for too few services.  As a matter of fact, it is coming to light that it is more dangerous to your health to be on Medicaid than it is to be uninsured.  Here is an excerpt from Avik Roy’s broadside:  How Medicaid Fails the Poor.




There’s a massive fallacy at the heart of Medicaid, and therefore at the heart of Obamacare.  It’s the idea that health insurance equals health care.

It doesn’t take a PhD in health economics to appreciate that if you have a card that says you have health insurance, but that card doesn’t get you into the doctor’s office when you need help, you’re not going to get better health care.  But in case you were wondering, PhD’s – and MD’s – have looked at this problem.  In 2010, a group of surgeons at the University of Virginia asked this question:  Does the type of health insurance you have make a difference in the outcomes of the care you receive?

To answer it, they evaluated 893,658 major surgical operations from 2003 to 2007.  The results were jarring.  Patients on Medicare who were undergoing surgery were 45 percent more likely to die before leaving the hospital than those with private insurance; the uninsured were 74 percent more likely; and Medicaid patients were 93 percent more likely.  That is to say, despite the fact that we will soon spend more than $500 billion a year on Medicaid, Medicaid beneficiaries, on average, fared slightly worse than those with no insurance at all.






The advocates of Medicaid contend that this program helps the poor by providing preventive care.  Avik Roy’s pamphlet also torpedoes this assumption by referencing the Oregon study and others.  Of course, progressives come up with all sorts of excuses.  Mr. Roy refutes each one.  Watch this video.  At the 3:24 mark he describes that Medicaid reimburses doctors 30 cents for every dollar it collects.






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