In an earlier post, I presented some data on which kind of physicians in the United States are most and least likely to see new patients who receive Medicaid, the state/federal program to pay healthcare costs for low income people. Now a recent study lays out some reasons why many physicians are so reluctant to see such patients….
Healthcare markets are complex and confusing places. But one fact is simple and straightforward: all else equal, hospitals and emergency departments are a lot more expensive than outpatient clinics. Which makes it all the more bewildering that so many low income patients prefer hospitals over primary care clinics. Bewildering until now. Shreya Kangovi and colleagues…
We have experienced an impressive slowdown in the growth of healthcare expenditures in recent years, a slowdown attributed in part to the plethora of important drugs which have gone generic in recent years. But state Medicaid programs, according to a recent study in Health Affairs, could have slowed healthcare costs even more, if they had been quicker to switch patients from trade to…
Imagine you are the breadwinner for a family of four, and have been out of work for a while in the recessionary economy. Your financial situation is so dire that you have had to enroll your family in Medicaid. Then you find a job, not one that will make you wealthy but one that pays…
In a recent post, I wrote about the fact that many physicians in the US do not accept new appointments with Medicaid enrollees. I was surprised to see it quickly garnered over 25,000 views. I guess it’s good to write posts that people read. But I fear that many people read it because it was…
With its expansion of Medicaid eligibility, the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) was supposed to go a long way towards providing healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. That accomplishment was dealt a large blow by the Supreme Court, when it forbade the federal government from requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage. Nevertheless, many states…
If you have been paying attention to US healthcare policy debates lately, you know that hospitals have a price problem. Walk across the street from one hospital to a competitor hospital, and you could easily find yourself facing a $30,000 increase in your medical bills. At one extreme for instance recent information shows that replacing your hip…
According to a recent Forbes post: “A huge pay raise promised under the Affordable Care Act for primary care doctors who treat the nation’s poor covered by Medicaid health insurance is nearly three months behind schedule and may take another three months before it kicks in.” I suggest you look at the entire essay, because…
States face a tough choice right now, of whether to expand their Medicaid roles with 90% of the costs being borne by the government. (Medicaid is a combined Federal/State program to pay for healthcare of low income individuals and families.) Why is taking money from the Feds a tough decision? For starters, it means supporting,…
Part of Obamacare involved expanding Medicaid, the health insurance program for low income folks in the U.S. The law required states to offer Medicaid to people living at 125% of the federal poverty limit or lower. States that refused to do this would lose Federal funding for Medicaid (which splits costs about 50/50 federal vs…