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July 26th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, July 25 (HealthDay News) — On June 28, the U.S.
Supreme Court struck down part of a federal mandate to expand Medicaid as
unconstitutional, but a new study suggests that widening access to the
program would save lives.
The study, published online July 25 in the New England Journal of
Medicine, looked at outcomes for three states that have already
expanded access to the joint federal-state program, which helps many
low-income people pay for health services.
According to the study authors, Arizona, Maine and New York each
“substantially expanded adult Medicaid eligibility” before 2000 to include
childless, poor adults, much as the 2010 Affordable Care Act seeks to
do.
The researchers tracked state death statistics, levels of delays of
medical care linked to a lack of insurance and residents’ self-reported
health during the five years before and after the expansion of the states’
Medicaid programs.
They compared those numbers to rates from four neighboring states
(Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania) that had not
undertaken the same expansion of Medicaid for adults.
Overall, data on more than 429,000 people was included in the
analysis.
Researchers led by Dr. Benjamin Sommers, assistant professor of health
policy and economics at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston,
found that expansion benefitted state residents.
“State Medicaid expansions to cover low-income adults were
significantly associated with reduced mortality, as well as improved
coverage, access to care and self-reported health,” they concluded.
Specifically, death rates fell by about 6 percent in states that
expanded access to Medicaid, with older adults, nonwhites and the poor
most likely to benefit. An extra 2.2 percent of the states’ population
gained access to health insurance, and nearly 3 percent saw reductions in
delays for medical care linked to cost.
More residents said they felt better too. After Medicaid expansions in
the three states, 2.2 percent more residents rated their health as
“excellent” or “very good,” the study found.
“The recent Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act ruled
that states could decide whether or not they wanted to participate in the
health care law’s Medicaid expansion,” Sommers said in a Harvard news
release. “Our study provides evidence suggesting that expanding Medicaid
has a major positive effect on people’s health.”
In a journal commentary accompanying the study, two legal experts say
the research shows the benefits to states of supporting the Affordable
Care Act’s provision to expand Medicaid.
“Several Republican governors had made a show of their adamant refusal
to expand their Medicaid programs,” wrote Timothy Stoltzfus Jost of
Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va., and Sara
Rosenbaum of George Washington University School of Public Health and
Health Services in Washington, D.C.
“The [Affordable Care Act] offers no other means for covering adults
with incomes below 100 percent of the poverty level,” the two experts
noted. “Resisting states effectively intensify the huge uncompensated
burden faced by their hospitals, deprive other health care industry
players of important revenues and keep their medically underserved
communities from receiving an enormous economic infusion.”
Not everyone agrees, however, that the expansion of a public program is
the smartest means of improving access to care.
“This seems like very solid research, and encouraging results. The
question remains, however, whether Medicaid expansion is the best way to
get the job done,” said Greg Scandlen, director of the advocacy group
Consumers for Health Care Choices. “The program is already under great
stress, both in financial terms and in delivering health services. Would
it have been better to use the same funds to get the same people into the
private market? We can’t know, but it would be worth studying.”
Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato
Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, echoed those sentiments.
“These results are unsurprising, and do not imply that states should
expand Medicaid,” he said. “One would hope and expect that spending
billions of dollars on Medicaid would save lives. The real question is
whether this is the lowest-cost way of saving lives. I wonder if the
authors tally the cost of those Medicaid expansions and see how much it
cost per life saved.”
The Harvard press release notes that Sommers “is currently working as
an adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However,
this paper was conceived and drafted while Dr. Sommers was employed at
Harvard, and the findings and views in this paper do not represent the
views of the Department of Health and Human Services.”
More information
Visit the U.S. Supreme Court site for the official Affordable Care Act
ruling.
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