Remember, This is What the White House Calls “Health Insurance”
The study focused on eight potentially curable cancers, such as lung cancer and melanoma….
The bad news first: Medicaid patients had worse survival rates than the rest of the study sample, which included both those with private insurance and with no coverage at all. The disparities persisted even after the researchers controlled for where patients live, how much education they had received and the income level of their neighborhoods.
But the good news is that patients who were enrolled in the program prior to their cancer diagnosis tended to do better than those who sign up after learning of their disease. This suggests to the authors that longer enrollment in the entitlement program “may be associated with a greater ability on the part of the beneficiary to develop a network of providers and an ability to navigate the system.”
Source: Sara Kliff @ Ezra Klein’s blog
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
It’s not shocking to hear they fared worse than those with private insurance. The mystery is that they fared worse than those without coverage.
I suppose this raises the question of whether Medicaid is really worse than nothing.
Got to read this at work last night. I had a hard time figuring out exactly who was in the non-Medicaid, not insured comparison group. Since I am sure you read it in greater detail and with better understanding than I did, could you please explain.
Steve
With there being no tangible health benefit (survival, longetivity) for Medicaid patients with cancer, the arguments left for Medicaid proponents are ideological.
It doesn’t surpirsed me that Medicaid patients fare worse than others. There are differences on so many levels how medical care is provided under Medicaid. This begins with the Medicaid patient, then doctors and then hospital, etc.
Good for your insurance! That’s smart. Those pills do not work aawnyy! Stop spending your money on junk food. Eat a salad for lunch. Eliminate snacks. Walk, exercise. Stop looking for some useless crutch, and get yourself in gear to eat properly exercise. Eat healthy, act healthy, and you will get healthy.