Should the states be funding it? Maybe, or managing a side fund that would pay for hospital charity care and free clinics.
Should the churches and community social programs be taking care of the truly needy? Absolutely.
You're not suggesting that there should not be a safety net are you?
No, but the incentives are to get more people off of private insurance and into Medicaid. Some states are incuding people of more than 200% above the poverty level. And when you include the federal matching funds, on average, 22% of state budgets are spent of Medicaid. It is bankrupting the states.
The only people who should be in emergency rooms are people with injuries which require more than a bandaid and some iodine.
Medicaid people should not be going to private physician offices causing their costs to skyrocket. (I took my grandchild to the pediatrician several years ago and on the sign-in list where you were to put who was the responsible person for payment, almost 80% had written "Medicaid.")
There was a reason that many years ago hospitals had "charity wards." Hospitals shouldn't be giving Cadillac treatment to people who aren't even shouldering the cost. Do I mean they should be denied treatment? No! However, I do NOT think they need to be in fancy rooms with TV, phone service, and picking their meals from a menu. That should be for people who cover their expenses when the bill is paid.
Medicaid went largely unnoticed when it first came into being in mid-1965, meriting only passing mention from President Lyndon B. Johnson at a bill-signing ceremony in Independence, Mo., that focused on the passage of the Medicare health plan for Americans over age 65.
But four decades later, Medicaid’s numbers are eye-popping. It is now the nation’s largest health insurance program, covering 59 million poor people (53 million in traditional Medicaid and 6 million in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program), or one in six Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It pays for 37 percent of all births in the United States and helps foot the bills for more than 60 percent of all patients in nursing homes.
With states picking up nearly half of Medicaid’s $320 billion costs this year – and the federal government the rest – it’s little wonder that Medicaid is constantly generating controversy in state capitols and in Washington, D.C. Cut it, and politicians face accusations of harming the country’s most vulnerable citizens. But doing nothing is costly, too. Medicaid costs have been growing at 6 percent or more annually, twice the rate of inflation, and threaten to swamp state budgets.
Medicaid covers the poor and working class, but not all of them. The program is designed for low-income pregnant women, parents and children, the elderly, blind and disabled. It’s limited to Americans and legal immigrants, largely those who have been in the country more than five years.
That population includes some of the sickest – and most expensive – patients in the health care system. States try to clamp down on those costs, but at the risk of angering doctors, dentists, hospitals, nursing homes and drug companies that provide the services.
The impact on state budgets is huge. Accounting for 22 percent of state spending, Medicaid recently surpassed elementary and secondary education as the most expensive item on state ledgers, once federal matching grants are taken into account. And because Medicaid is geared toward poor people, its expenses and enrollments climb when states can least afford them: when the economy turns sour.