Side Effects: More Americans Will Feel the Pain of Medicaid’s Shortcomings

Kathryn Nix / September 15, 2010

Lawmakers shoved through Obamacare on the promise that it would decrease the number of uninsured Americans. The new law does this by expanding Medicaid’s eligibility to cover an additional 16 million Americans by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  However, recent analysis from former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and American Action Forum analyst Michael Ramlet shows this strategy exacerbates existing problems within the health care system—making Obamacare’s biggest “benefit” questionable.

Medicaid, the destination for many of those projected to be uninsured under prior law, is a federal health program for low-income Americans. The program typically reimburses providers at significantly lower rates than do private insurers, often not even covering the cost for basic care. As a result, many physicians limit the number of Medicaid beneficiaries they see or drop Mediciad altogether, reducing Medicaid enrollees’ access to primary care and prompting many to overutilize emergency room care. (more…)