Medicaid’s “Titanic” Problems
Various press outlets have reported on Texas Governor Rick Perry’s statement earlier this week that expanding Medicaid “is not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic.” However, fewer news reports have focused on this closely related story:
Only 31 percent of Texas doctors said they were accepting new patients who rely on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled, in the survey provided to The Associated Press on Sunday. In 2010, the last time the survey was taken, 42 percent of doctors accepted new Medicaid patients. In 2000, that number was 67 percent.
States are looking for ways to modify their Medicaid programs, but yesterday HHS once again indicated it would deny them that flexibility. The questions are obvious: Does anyone think a program where fewer than one in three doctors will see new patients needs anything but major reform? And why is this Administration still blocking states’ attempts to reform their Medicaid programs and instead trying to defend an indefensible status quo?