Just about everyone has an opinion about the Obamacare reforms put forth by Republicans. And it's difficult for most of us to decide what will be the best outcome, especially since Democrats will attempt to beat Republicans about the head with whatever they come up with.
But apparently, some people think Medicaid is a solution. Jim Geraghty eviscerates that suggestion in The Unmentioned Problems in ‘Medicaid for All’. It's good that someone is finally mentioning it. Here it is:
The “Medicaid for all” crowd also usually hand-waves away the fact that a lot of doctors don’t take Medicaid. As of 2015, only 67 percent of doctors take Medicaid, and only 45 percent of doctors take new patients on Medicaid.
Anyone who has ever tried to find a doctor for someone on Medicaid has seen this up close. Then there's this:
There’s also the inconvenient fact that the best study we have shows that Medicaid doesn’t actually improve people’s health. It makes them feel better by self-reported measures, and less financially stressed. But it also had “no statistically significant effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, or cardiovascular risk” and “found no evidence that Medicaid caused new enrollees to substitute office visits for [emergency room] visits; if anything, Medicaid made them more likely to use both.”
Obamacare was constructed with the goal of making unraveling it too tedious and complicated to attempt. Republicans have been presented with an opportunity to demonstrate they are as smart as Jonathan Gruber.
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