To Dream of Impossible Things

Medicaid is actually worse than having no health insurance at all????

It also got me thinking: what other impossible things do conservatives routinely believe?

Mind speaking for yourself? You're no conservative, so by definition you're making up the nonsense you're posting. Lies, damn lies, and populist statistics!

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Listening to NPR this morning, I was struck by this story:

Quote:

As high-level budget talks drag on in Washington, the Medicaid program for the poor remains a prime candidate for cuts. In recent months, Republicans have criticized Medicaid for badly serving its target population. But a new study — the first of its kind in nearly four decades — finds that Medicaid is making a bigger impact than even some of its supporters may have realized.
...
The findings are dramatically at odds with the storyline coming from critics of the program.

"Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage At All," blared a headline on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal back in March.

Scott Gottlieb, a physician and resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and author of that column, says now that it overstates his opinion. But he does say there's a substantial body of academic work that shows people on Medicaid fare worse than those with private insurance.

Really? That's the storyline that conservative critics are putting forward? That Medicaid is actually worse than having no health insurance at all????

I was dumbfounded -- which happens rarely enough to be noteworthy in itself. It also got me thinking: what other impossible things do conservatives routinely believe? Do they, like the White Queen, believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast, or do they spread it out over the course of a day?

"Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage At All," is a headline begging for verification, though.

Gottlieb’s studies concluded that Medicaid patients were more likely to die when treated for neck cancer, more likely to have heart attacks or strokes when treated for heart disease and less likely to survive after lung transplants.

Interesting. Perhaps even true.

Other studies by researchers not necessarily committed to extolling the virtues of free enterprise health care have come to different conclusions. A quick survey of the research found some interesting studies showing that Medicaid patients had similar outcomes, despite per-patient costs substantially lower than private insurance plans. Other studies have found worse outcomes for Medicaid patients, although the differences often evaporated when the researchers corrected for things like smoking and drinking and delays in treatment and education — all of which have been shown to have a big impact on health outcomes. One study by the Urban Institute found that Medicaid programs cost 10 percent less for children and 30 percent less for adults. A study of AHCCCS by the Kaiser Foundation found that Arizona’s health-management plan approach costs 10 to 15 percent less than private plans, but produced comparable results and had higher patient satisfaction scores.

But set that aside for the moment.

Suppose Kyl’s right. Medicaid doesn’t provide good enough care.

So if a quarter of the people he represents rely on Medicaid to keep them alive — shouldn’t he be manning the ramparts of reform? Shouldn’t he be insisting on improvements in the system?

And if he doesn’t want those 25 million Americans without insurance now to qualify for Medicaid — shouldn’t he propose some other way to keep them alive? Mind you, one study by the Harvard School of Medicine suggests that 45,000 Americans die each year for lack of medical insurance. That’s the toll of 15 9/11s, year in and year out

• There's the Bush administration's "torture for peace and justice" program in Guantanamo Bay.

joefromchicago wrote:

Medicaid is actually worse than having no health insurance at all????

Statistically, this statement is perfectly true.

I'm not really surprised to hear that private insurance is better than Medicaid. For one thing, most doctors accept at least some private insurance.

"Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage At All," is a headline begging for verification, though.

thomas wrote:

• There's the Bush administration's "torture for peace and justice" program in Guantanamo Bay.

To be fair, that one seems to have improved somewhat under Obama. But who knows what continues to go on in the CIA's secret prisons throughout the world?