 (According to article in Kaiser Health News, posted February 21, 2020, by By Phil Galewitz) The Trump administration’s top Medicaid official, Seema Verma, has been increasingly critical of the entitlement program she has overseen for three years. Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has warned that the federal government and states need to better control spending and improve care to the 70 million people on Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the low-income population. She supports changes to Medicaid that would give states the option to receive capped annual federal funding for some enrollees instead of open-ended payouts based on enrollment and health costs. This would be a departure from how the program has operated since it began in 1965. In an early February speech to the American Medical Association, Verma noted how changes are needed because Medicaid is one of the top two biggest expenses for states, and its costs are expected to increase 500% by 2050. “Yet, for all that spending, health outcomes today on Medicaid are mediocre and many patients have difficulty accessing care,” she said. A CMS spokesperson responded by pointing to a CMS fact sheet comparing the health status of people on Medicaid to people with private insurance and Medicare. The fact sheet, among other things, showed 43% of Medicaid enrollees report their health as excellent or very good compared with 71% of people with private insurance, 14% on Medicare and 58% who were uninsured.
The spokesperson also pointed to a 2017 report by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), a congressional advisory board, that noted: “Medicaid enrollees have more difficulty than low-income privately insured individuals in finding a doctor who accepts their insurance and making an appointment; Medicaid enrollees also have more difficulty finding a specialist physician who will treat them.” Several national Medicaid experts said Verma is wrong to use health status as a proxy for whether Medicaid helps improve health for people. That’s because to be eligible for Medicaid, people must fall into a low income bracket, which can impact their health in many ways. For example, they may live in substandard housing or not get proper nutrition and exercise. In addition, lack of transportation or child care responsibilities can hamper their ability to visit doctors. Benjamin Sommers, a health economist at Harvard University, said Verma’s comparison of the health status of Medicaid recipients against people with Medicare or private insurance is invalid because the populations are so different and face varied health risks. Death rates, for example, are higher among people in the Medicare program than those in private insurance or Medicaid, but that’s not a knock on Medicare. It’s because Medicare primarily covers people 65 and older. By definition, Medicaid covers the most vulnerable people in the community, from newborns to the disabled and the poor, said Rachel Nuzum, a vice president with the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund. “The Medicaid population does not look like the privately insured population.” For a better mechanism to gauge health outcomes under Medicaid, experts point to dozens of studies that track what happened in states that chose in the past six years to pursue the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. The health law gave states the option to extend Medicaid to everyone with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $17,600 annually for an individual. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have adopted the expansion. “Most research demonstrates that Medicaid expansion has improved access to care, utilization of services, the affordability of care, and financial security among the low-income population,” concluded the Kaiser Family Foundation in summarizing findings from more than 300 studies. “Studies show improved self-reported health following expansion and an association between expansion and certain positive health outcomes.” Studies found the expansion of Medicaid led to lower mortality rates for people with heart disease and among end-stage renal disease patients initiating dialysis. Researchers also reported that Medicaid expansion was associated with declines in the length of stay of hospitalized patients. One study found a link between expansion and declines in mechanical ventilation rates among patients hospitalized for various conditions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
