Medicaid Flexibility Still Missing from Wyden-Brown

Stuart Butler / March 16, 2011

On Monday Politico ran a column by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) taking issue with my critique of his proposal to accelerate the granting of waivers under Obamacare. Unfortunately, he missed a central point I was making about limitations on the waivers that could be granted.

Apparently the senator was offended by this paragraph, from my New England Journal of Medicine piece on his bill:

Even more problematic to proponents of state flexibility on both the left and the right is that states would not be able to fold other health programs into their waiver request. Liberal skeptics at the Physicians for a National Health Program, for instance, point out that provisions of Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Taft–Hartley plans, and other programs could not be waived, leaving large obstacles in the path of a potential single-payer system. And on the other hand, by leaving Medicaid intact, including the required expansion of the program under the ACA, Wyden–Brown does little to comfort conservatives who envision a privatized voucher approach. (more…)