Tag: uninsured

The Unbridgeable Gap between Left and Right on Health Reform

Jun 8, 2011• 57

By JEFF GOLDSMITH

Though thoroughly smothered under 2900 pages of well meaning but poorly focused, expert-driven “good works”, the core of the Affordable Care Act was providing 30 million people subsidized health insurance coverage. As the country continues to decide how it feels about this monumental legislation, a major ideological divide persists over whether the aggressive coverage expansion in health reform was really needed or not.

Far from “selling itself,” as a overconfident White House aide suggested it would back on March 23, 2010, health reform remains strikingly unpopular. Only 37% of the public thinks the country will be better off as a result of health reform, and only 28% think their families will be better off, according to the May Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll. There is a stark partisan divide over health reform. While 72% of Democrats have a favorable opinion of health reform, a substantial minority believes the bill could have done more (covered more people, provided a public option or path to single payer). Alternatively, 74% of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of health reform; the same percentage favors repeal. Independents tend to break toward the Republican view of the bill (49% unfavorable vs. 35% favorable). Those opposed feel more intensely about health reform than those in favor.

The Ryan House Budget for 2012 zeroes out all new spending for health reform (while keeping ACA’s Medicare cuts, devoting them to deficit reduction!). The conservative narrative is that the problem of the uninsured was liberal mythology, not meriting major new spending. In the blogosphere, an analysis surfaced suggesting that the real uninsured problem is only about 4 million people. This apparently originated in a Heritage Foundation blog posting from late August, 2009. Other conservative analysts charitably suggest there may be as many as ten to twelve million uninsured worthy of federal help. To take care of this smaller number, you do not need a major coverage expansion, but merely to apply the familiar market oriented remedies: selling insurance across state lines, high deductible health plans, malpractice reform, high risk pools, etc.

Talking Uninsurance with Phil Lebherz

May 19, 2011• 2

By MATTHEW HOLT

Phil Lebherz is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Health Coverage Education, which has as its mission the goals of educating uninsured people about their options to get insurance. Phil is also the Founder and Chairman of LISI, a company that provides sales support services for employee benefits insurance brokers. With colleagues at the Foundation (including Alain Enthoven, Len Schaeffer and David Helwig) Phil just released a report that was featured in Health Affairs that basically said that most uninsured people showing up in Emergency Rooms in San Diego should have been covered by Medicaid, and that the set-up of Medicaid in California makes it impossible for them to enroll themselves. This is preciously close to the conservative argument that there are no uninsured because they all “could be” covered by Medicaid. But given that under the ACA Medicaid is going to massively expand, you may surmise that I’m not altogether won over by this argument.

So a fun conversation with Phil ensued. You can listen to it here (and look at for the bit where he claims that Len Schaeffer–the man who built Wellpoint into the force it is today–is really a supporter of universal health care because he ran HCFA under Carter for a few minutes in the 1970s!). And no, it wasn’t all violent disagreement–but enough was to make it interesting.

Medicaid and Health Outcomes (again)

Mar 4, 2011• 14

By AUSTIN FRAKT

Avik Roy has read and posted about the papers I reviewed as part of my Medicaid-IV series. If you’ve forgotten, the purpose of that series of posts was to examine studies that use proven, sound methods to infer the causal effect of (as opposed to a correlation between) Medicaid enrollment on health outcomes. From that series, I concluded that there is no credible evidence that Medicaid is worse for health than being uninsured. Considering only studies that show correlations (not causation), Avik disagrees.

Avik’s post is long, but you can save yourself some trouble by skipping the gratuitous attack on economists in general, and Jon Gruber in particular, as well as the troubled description of instrumental variables (IV).* About halfway down is his actual review of the papers; look for the bold text.

The point I want to drive home in this post is why an IV approach is necessary in studying Medicaid outcomes. People enrolling in Medicaid differ from those who don’t. They differ for reasons we can observe and for those we can’t. An ideal study would be a randomized controlled trial (RTC) that randomizes people into Medicaid and uninsured status. Thats neither practical nor ethical. So we’re stuck, unless we can be more clever.

The next best thing we can do is look for natural experiments. That’s what IV exploits. In this case, the studies I examined use the state-level variation in Medicaid eligibility (and related programs). That variation obviously affects enrollment into Medicaid (you can’t enroll unless you’re eligible), though it is not determinative. Importantly, state-level variation in Medicaid eligibility rules does not itself affect individual-level health. Other than figuratively, do you suddenly take ill when a law is passed or a regulation is changed? Do you see how Medicaid eligibility rules are somewhat like the randomization that governs an RTC, affecting “treatment” (Medicaid enrollment) but not outcomes directly? (If this is unclear, go here.)Continue reading…

Victims of Health Care Reform

Jan 31, 2011• 43

By JOHN GOODMAN, PhD

Who will be hurt the most by the health reform legislation Congress passed last year?

Answer: The most vulnerable segments of society: the poor, the elderly and the disabled. That’s right. Virtually everyone in Congress who is left-of-center voted for a law that will significantly decrease access to care for the people they claim to care most about.

Why isn’t anyone writing about this?

Answer: Because almost all the people who write about health care know almost nothing about economics.

Basically, there are two ways to reform health care. One way is top down. The other is bottom up. The latter is based on the economic way of thinking. The former rejects that way of thinking. The latter gets the economic incentives right for all the individual actors, leaving the social result largely unpredictable. The former starts with a social goal and tries to impose it from above, leaving individuals with perverse incentives to undermine it. The latter depends for its success on people acting in their self-interest. The former depends for its success on preventing people from acting in their self-interest.

I think I can probably count on the fingers of two hands the number of people in health policy who accept the economic way of thinking. All the rest — 99.9% of the total, including a lot of people with “Ph.D., economist” after their names — reject it in spades.

Health Care Georgians Deserve

Jan 19, 2011• 1

By GAYATHRI SURESH KUMAR, MD

As a physician who works at Grady Memorial Hospital, I am regularly reminded of the implications of poor access to health care.

One of my regular patients had been suffering from diabetes and hypertension for five years. She was a single, dedicated mother who had been working long hours at a local grocery store to provide for her 15-year-old daughter. She understood that good health meant that she could perform better at work, and the earnings she received from her work would help her provide a stable home for her daughter. Therefore, she did whatever it took to keep herself healthy — monitored her diet, took her medicines diligently and visited the physician regularly.

Things changed one day when during one of her visits to my clinic she said, “Doc, I just lost my job. I don’t have insurance anymore. Medicaid denied me coverage even though they said it was OK for my daughter to have insurance. I can’t pay my co-pays to see you anymore. I may not see you next time.” I was horrified.

A mother who wanted nothing more than to be as healthy as possible for her child should be able to receive care. The health care system in our country that should be serving patients exactly like this one is preventing patients from receiving the care they need and deserve.

In many cases, access to health care coverage is not within the control of patients nor their physicians, resulting in significant consequences. That is, if they don’t obtain coverage, many of our patients will succumb to their (many preventable) illnesses if they don’t have access to their physicians or cannot pay for their medications. My patient’s future could be a testimony to this.

What further confounded me was that Medicaid denied my patient.

Suing the Right to Life

Oct 25, 2010• 18

By LUCAS RESTREPO, MD

Last week, the fire department of a small town in Tennessee called South Fulton ignored the call of a man who needed help quelling a fire near his house. The firefighters declined lending a hand because the caller neglected to pay a $75 bill, the prerequisite for deserving assistance. The caller tried to put down the fire with a garden hose, but after two hours, his house caught on fire. When the property of a neighbor who had paid the $75 became threatened by the flames, the gallant firemen promptly answered the call of duty. The brave public servants prevented the flames from spreading to the property of their responsible contributor, carefully avoiding to suppress the conflagration’s source. Someone has to teach a lesson to the free-loaders in our society, explains a high-minded commentator.

Our health care system works exactly like South Fulton’s worthy fire department: we are entitled to health care only if we have money or qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. If you don’t have money, your health entirely depends on the charity of health care providers, who, as our admirable firefighters, may refuse to help.

I wish to argue that, besides being cruel and inhumane, the “South Fulton health care model” is a latent threat to society. The cost and effort of preventive medicine and basic primary care (fire prevention, putting down a small fire) is less than dealing with instances of end-organ failure (a house in flames). Moreover, having uninsured people (not aiming water to the fire source) creates a constant economic liability to responsible costumers (the neighborhood). On the other hand, why should someone become a doctor, nurse, or health insurance company founder (a firefighter) without being an altruist? Do firefighters dream of wealth and leisure?

The costs of not doing anything about a burning house are always paid in full by society ―and some costs are not immediately apparent. Who loves the sight and smell of a charred landscape? Where will the man live now that he has no house? Will he react violently to the inaction of the firemen? Will the reputation of the fire department (and the city’s) go up in smoke?

Which mob should we care about?

Aug 13, 2009• 16

By Matthew Holt

The one on the left one protesting against the extension of health care to the uninsured at Sen Arlen Specter’s townhall meeting? Or the one on the right–some of the 1500 un and underinsured queuing for 2 days for care in inner-city Los Angeles (both photos from NY Times)

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