Blind leading the blind

3 May 2013 By Daniel Indiviglio

The trillions of dollars America plans for insuring the poor may not improve health, new research shows. The study’s merits aside, its scrutiny of Medicaid costs and benefits offers a model for making policy. Most programs would profit from a thorough look before Congress leaps.

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A new Oregon study found that U.S. Medicaid, government healthcare insurance for poorer Americans, may not improve physical health. The research published on May 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine also found that a group enrolled in Medicaid spent more on healthcare than a group that was not enrolled.
In 2008, the state held a lottery to decide who would get expanded Medicaid coverage. After 25 months, researchers studied a randomly selected group of 12,000 and found no significant effect of Medicaid coverage on physical health, including conditions such as hypertension and high cholesterol. They did, however, find a decrease in the prevalence of depression, and catastrophic out-of-pocket medical costs were almost completely eliminated.
Medicaid will cost state and federal governments about $7.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The program’s expansion is an integral part of President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law, and it will cost the federal government about $1 trillion over a decade.

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