Why Are Democrats Defending a Broken Medicaid Program?
Multiple press outlets have reported on a New England Journal of Medicine study released today regarding access – or specifically the LACK of access – to specialty care for Medicaid beneficiaries. The study took place in Cook County, Illinois (i.e., Chicago – President Obama’s hometown), and featured researchers acting as “secret shoppers” who called physician offices requesting appointments for their children – once while claiming their child was covered under Medicaid, once while claiming private insurance coverage.
The results were stunning, if not necessarily surprising. Two in three (66%) Medicaid children were denied specialist appointments, compared with only 11% of children with private insurance. And those Medicaid patients who did get an appointment faced waiting times twice as long as those with private insurance – an average of six weeks for the urgent conditions specified in the study (e.g., possible fractured arm, a seizure the previous week). In only one of the eight specialties studied (endocrinology) did even half of the specialists accept Medicaid coverage.
The New York Times’ coverage of the study includes interesting reactions:
- The study’s main author: “It’s very disturbing….As a mother, if I had a kid who was having seizures or newly diagnosed juvenile diabetes, I would want to get them in right away.”
- A specialist in the Cook County public health system: “It’s interesting to think you even need a study to prove that [i.e., poor access for Medicaid patients]. It’s pretty much common knowledge.”
- An Illinois resident whose foster children are on Medicaid: “People say: ‘Sure, I take insurance. Oh, I don’t take Medicaid’…I guess I’m lucky that my kids are almost never sick.”
Medicaid needs fundamental reform – yet Democrats at least $118 billion in new mandates on this broken program. But even as Democrats endorse the status quo for Medicaid, they have also steadfastly refused to enroll in the Medicaid program themselves – every single Democrat voted against a proposal last year that would have placed Members of Congress on Medicaid. So if it’s not good enough for Democrats themselves, why do they continue to block reform, subjecting tens of millions of Americans to this flawed and broken program?