GAO finds children on Medicaid have worse physician access than uninsured children

Perhaps Medicaid is a misnomer. I’m guessing this comes as little surprise to anyone with kids who rely on the program for health care.

Avik Roy explains the GAO’s new findings on his health care policy blog today at Forbes.com:

When I first began writing about the University of Virginia surgical outcomes study—the one that evaluated nearly a million major surgical operations from 2003 to 2007, and found that Medicaid patients were 13 percent more likely to die in-hospital than those with no insurance at all—there were skeptics. And I get why, because the study’s findings were counter-intuitive: we spend more than $400 billion a year on a welfare program, only to get worse health outcomes?

Those invested in the political success of Obamacare had even more incentive to attack the UVa study, as our new health law adds 16 25 million Americans to the Medicaid rolls. If Medicaid leads to worse health outcomes, then Obamacare will throw trillions of dollars down the toilet, for nothing.

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Now comes a new survey from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showing that children have worse access to physicians than those with no insurance at all. The survey, which drew from 932 respondents, found that 21% of physicians were taking “none” or only “some” new patients aged 0-18, compared to 45% for the uninsured, and 53% for Medicaid/CHIP. Medicaid especially underperformed the uninsured among primary care physicians (23% private / 45% uninsured / 55% Medicaid) as compared to specialists (17% / 47% / 49%).

Why would the uninsured do better than Medicaid? It turns out that Medicaid’s problems aren’t just that the program underpays doctors. It’s also that the program is a huge hassle to work with, in terms of paperwork and billing requirements. It’s also that Medicaid reimbursement checks come late, and it takes a lot of effort on the part of busy doctors to track bureaucrats down for timely payment. An uninsured patient who pays cash is infinitely easier to deal with, even if the uninsured patient only pays $20 up-front for an office visit.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Amanda Carpenter.

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