What’s Worse Than Being on Medicare?
Being on Medicaid as well. “Dual eligibles” have twice the rate of potentially avoidable hospitalizations, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality:
- Dual eligible patients accounted for roughly one of every three Medicare hospital stays primarily involving bed sores, asthma and diabetes, and one of every four stays for urinary tract infection, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bacterial pneumonia.
- Dual eligible patients ages 65 to 74 years were two to four times more likely than other Medicare patients the same age to have potentially preventable hospitalizations for most of the conditions studied.
Using (bad) statistics you could argue Medicaid eligibility is bad for seniors’ health! But something less sinister is responsible. Poor people tend to be less healthy for a variety of reasons — many of which have to do with lifestyle. Thus, seniors with incomes low enough to be dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid would be expected to be among the least healthy seniors when controlling for age.
I agree with Devon. These people have poor health because they are poor. The Medicare/Medicaid designation is secondary.
And a great deal depends on who defines what admissions are avoidable.
I agree with Devon’s first statement. I think the dual eligibles probably get worse care because (1) they are on Medicaid and (2) the payment system doesn’t compensate providers very well for taking care of difficult to treat patients.
The common thread seems to be that both programs are administered by the government.