Our Flawed but Beneficial Medicaid Program

Many U.S. governors are proposing or implementing deep cuts to their states' Medicaid programs to address budget shortfalls, and some are calling for Medicaid to be converted to a block-grant program. Some commentators defend such policy retrenchment by claiming that Medicaid coverage fails to improve health outcomes — indeed, that its beneficiaries may have worse health outcomes than patients with no insurance at all.1 To make that case, these commentators have creatively interpreted observational studies that have examined clinical outcomes associated with particular medical interventions according to the patient's insurance type — Medicaid, Medicare, private coverage, or none — and . . .