Fix Health Care Policy

Medicaid Is Failing the People It Is Intended to Help

Heritage’s Kevin Dayaratna finds in a recent survey of academic literature that “Medicaid’s so-called safety net cripples the very people it is designed to help.”

The structural flaws in the program produce a cascade of failures, starting with underpaid and overburdened doctors, which produces longer waits for care, in turn leading to late-stage diagnosis of illnesses, finally resulting in more costly (though often less effective) treatments and higher mortality rates.

Recent statistics show that Medicaid enrollment has reached an all-time high of 70.4 million beneficiaries. In other words, one in five Americans now receives Medicaid benefits. Despite this, Obamacare’s intended expansion of Medicaid would add another 17 million beneficiaries to the already overburdened program.

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Tags: expensive treatments, failing, higher mortality rates, less effective, Medicaid, poor quality of care, private coverage, reform, safety net