This is Where Half of the Newly (ObamaCare) Insured are Headed
Medicaid beneficiaries are nearly twice as likely as individuals with private health insurance to face barriers to primary health care, and visit emergency departments for care much more frequently, according to a study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Full study by Paul Cheung, Jennifer Wiler, Robert Lowe and Adit Ginde on the barriers affecting Medicaid beneficiaries’ utilization of primary care worth reading.
Scary thought.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the number of Medicaid and CHIP enrollees is estimated to be about near 84 million. In addition, Medicare physician fees are scheduled to be cut to rates that are below Medicaid by the end of the decade. Medicaid (and Medicare) enrollees already have a difficult time finding primary care doctors who will treat them for the low reimbursements these programs pay. If these cuts go into effect, doctors will probably cease to accept new Medicaid patients and drop out of the Medicare program.
Let me add to the pessimism. I was actually suprised to see that, while 9 percent of privately insured faced at least one barrier to primary-care access, 16 percent of Medicaid dependents did.
Although on a relative basis that is a three quarters worsening of the problem, it does not look as bad as I expected on an absolute basis. That is, 84 percent of Medicaid dependents reported no barriers to access.
How do we know it will get worse? Because the supply schedule, i.e. capacity, will drop as physicians leave medicine or potential physicians decide on other careers.
As far back as a November 2, 2006 report by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, 17 percent of Canadian families had no primary-care doctor. This is almost exactly the same as U.S. Medicaid patients.
Single payer = Medicaid for all!
How do those figures compare to people who are uninsured? That seems to be the more relevant comparison here.
The low reimbursements will eventually amount to a big problem for Medicaid recipients getting access to healthcare.
Niecey I’m going to check out your link now and to sign the petition. You know that I am a cynic and am of the ooinipn that we are already in a downward spiral and there is little that can be really done to change that. I hope I’m wrong and you are right.
Good question. Off the top of my head:1. Offer tax bekars to smaller businesses so they can provide health care coverage for their employees, or help fund them in some fashion.2. Invest more money into FQHC’s (federally qualified health centers), which already know how to manage Medicaid dollars, and encourage people with little to no health care to visit them for preventative and minor coverage issues3. Take a look at communities around the country that provide services for high priced procedures to see if there’s duplication, triplication, or more. If so, select one facility as the one allowed to provide it. This really is one area where there’s lots of waste and lots of costs. Give physicians privileges at more than one hospital for these services and those hospitals can then take the time to get proficient at providing them, insurance companies only have to negotiate with one provider and therefore can pay a bit more, and that will end up saving money also.That’s just to start with. 🙂