State Sen. Ben Nevers apparently needs some extra
exercise, so he decided to flog the dead horse called Medicaid
expansion. But he does so on the usual mistaken beliefs of its supporters
and on the erroneous thinking that the voting public as a whole is actually
dumber than state legislators.
That latter group would have to
be pretty
dumb to support the idea. The state has the choice to include individuals
at 25-100 (or perhaps up to 138) percent of the poverty line in Medicaid because
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) to stay consistent
with the Constitution cannot compel states to do this. The most reliable study
done on the matter, by the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals last
year, indicates rejection is the most cost-effective policy, showing that
within a decade the state will pay out $92.5 million more a year than without
it, by then the extra payout increasing by 15 percent a year and only going
higher.
No expansion also will provide
the best medical outcomes. Recently, a study in Oregon
demonstrated that the worst outcomes were recorded by those utilizing Medicaid
services, compared to those with private insurance and no insurance at all. Both
that and why the current method of serving the uninsured through uncompensated
care reimbursements saves money compared to expansion are explained by a fact
of which Nevers either is unaware or won’t admit in order to advance his
agenda.
As do many uninformed supporters
of expansion, Nevers repeats the party line that the uninsured crowd emergency
rooms because of lack of insurance that “cost all of us millions,” implying
that the bulk of uncompensated care payments go to the uninsured. This is a
myth; in fact, the largest
proportion of users of emergency medical service are those already on Medicaid,
and they had the highest rate of utilization for preventable conditions. And
when Arizona expanded Medicaid voluntarily in 2002, since then uncompensated
care costs have increased an average of 9 percent annually through 2010.
This in part explains why costs
would be higher for Louisiana by accepting expansion (the main cause being displacement
as expansion sucks in those previously using private insurance). And it doesn’t
even include the extra costs to the state and federal government by having to
deal with worse outcomes, and to the federal government (passed along to
Louisiana taxpayers) in that Obamacare envisions cutting uncompensated care
reimbursements in half when the available data show an increase would be
expected and will become politically necessary, increasing costs to all
taxpayers even more. Worse, emergency rooms would continue to be crowded by
Medicaid users, and even more, because expansion would produce too many
patients for too few doctors.
Despite these facts, no doubt
Nevers and others will try to confuse decision-makers by talking about, as
he has, how “In my senate district, one out of every four people does not
have any health insurance. How can I turn my back on 25 percent of the population
in my senate district?” Note the sleight of hand here, how not having health
insurance is equated with not having health care. The implication of that
transmogrification, of course, is patently false: anybody can walk into any
hospital in Louisiana and get treatment at any time, and if they do not have
ability to pay, any difference gets funded through uncompensated care.
The strategy contemplated by
Nevers is to offer his agenda as constitutional amendments, bypassing expansion
opponent Gov. Bobby
Jindal. The problem is, he has to get two-thirds of each chamber of the Legislature
to agree, when last year not even simple majorities could be mustered to
support that view. But even if that were to happen, implying a certain level of
stupidity to a large majority of legislators, as amendments then must be
ratified by a majority of voters, he thinks a lot of voters are idiots as well.
As long as the facts are made known
(as well as exposed the illogic
of supporters’ arguments, such as expansion should occur because then state
citizens’ federal tax dollars won’t go to finance expansion in other states
even though their total
tax bill would be higher with expansion), the voting public isn’t stupid.
Expansion is redistributive and those who would be allowed to take from others
would support it. But a majority would be worse off and would vote accordingly
if informed.
But it’s unlikely to get that far
because enough elected representatives (whom Nevers, ironically including
himself, disparages as “just a handful of people”) will see the wisdom in
continued rejection. Representative democracy does usually work out for the
best.
Medicaid expansion will give health insurance to about half the nation’s uninsured. Jeff simply doesn’t want Medicaid expansion to save money, so he reaches for whatever “study” helps his preconceived bias. Jeff teaches a class in empirically based policymaking, but all he does is just wait for marching orders from Jindal. As for DHH, two former secretaries of DHH called on Jindal to expand, and here is what a different study found (per T-P): “The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Office's analysis found that Louisiana would save between $532 million and $544 million over the first five years of the expansion.” Neither is the “study” that Jeff cites as one-sided as Jeff wants you to believe: “Gov. Jindal's own Department of Health and Hospitals found that the state would save as much as $367.5 million over the first 10 years of the expansion. DHH's worst-case scenario is that Louisiana would have to spend as much as $1.71 billion over a decade.” That Jindal isn’t honest about Medicaid “cost” doesn’t matter to Jeff, who simply wants to find some study, any study, that can somehow be construed to support whatever Jindal wants. That’s Jeff’s “empirically based policymaking.”
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