Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Survey estimates of Medicaid enrollment are 43 percent lower than raw Medicaid program enrollment counts. Why is this the case? Roebuck and Liberman (HSR 2009) find that many people are not reporting that they have Medicaid coverage. “43 percent of Medicaid enrollees answering the CPS as though they were not enrolled and 17 percent reported…
Transportation issues can create significant barriers to accessing quality health care. If you do not have a car, physically cannot drive, or do not have public transportation where you live, getting to the doctor’s office can be difficult. Although the federal government mandates that state Medicaid programs provide nonemergency medical transportation services to vulnerable populations,…
Wisconsin’s Medicaid plan covers children from 0-5 years old whose parents have income below 150% of the poverty line. Sixty percent of Massachusetts residence receive coverage through their employer compared to 53% nationwide. Forty-six percent of Californian firms with less than 50 employees offer health insurance compared to the national average of 43%. How did…
A paper by Buchmueller, LoSasso and Wong (2008) recounts that “6 million children who are eligible for public insurance remain uninsured.” One question that remains to be answered is whether or not the 6 million children eligible for SCHIP who did not take it up were disproportionately from immigrant groups. If this was true, public…
Recently, the San Diego Union Tribune reported that the Sharp Grossmont Hospital in eastern San Diego county was cited for a number of preventable deaths. Reporter Cherl Clark found numerous problems, which included: “staff members restraining a highly medicated, 25-year-old man with schizophrenia in such a way that he was allowed to suffocate. In addition,…
According to a report by the The Colorado Health Institute, 68 percent of rural and 74 percent of urban dentists do not accept Medicaid patients. Even for those dentists who do accept Medicaid, many are not accepting new Medicaid patients. The full report is available here.
Throughout its history, Medicaid provided health insurance for the nation’s poor. It did this by reimbursing providers on a fee-for-service basis. In the 1990s, however, California and other states decided to let private insurance companies bid for the right to provide services for Medicaid patients. These HMOs would receive a fixed per patient per month…
There is a law which states that drug companies must sell drugs to Medicaid at their the lowest price. It turns out the Merck was selling drugs to hospitals at a steeper discount than what they were giving to Medicaid. Merck will pay $399 million for overcharging in Philadelphia and $250 million for overcharging in…
I recently read a Health Affairs article analyzing a pay-for-performance (P4P) demonstration. The Local Initiative Rewarding Results (LIRR) demonstration in California involved seven Medicaid-focused health plans in California between 2003 and 2005. Here are some of my most recent thoughts on P4P: The article seemed to show that P4P worked best when there was much…