As Republicans scramble to justify their plan to give rich people a tax break by slashing Medicaid, they’re simultaneously claiming that their cuts aren’t really cuts and that Medicaid doesn’t work, anyway, so cutting it is good. Neither of these things is true—the cuts are cuts, and Medicaid definitely works, according to multiple studies and Medicaid patients themselves. Here’s a sample of what Republicans are claiming:
At National Review, Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes, “in a randomized trial in Oregon that gave some individuals Medicaid while leaving others uninsured, recipients gained no statistically significant improvement in physical health after two years.”
Here’s the reality of that Oregon study:
… what it found, in short, was that Medicaid protected enrollees from catastrophic health costs; boosted the likelihood of people reporting they were in good, very good, or excellent health by 25 percent; cut depressive symptoms by about 30 percent; and increased both diabetes diagnoses and treatment.
But the study also disappointed Medicaid’s backers: In particular, there was no evident improvement in blood sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol levels after two years.
How is that not an improvement? For two years of a small study, those are highly significant results—unless, of course, your priority is denying that Medicaid helps people. That’s not the only study out there, either:
One study compared three states implementing large Medicaid expansions in the early 2000s to neighboring states that didn’t expand Medicaid, finding a significant 6% decrease in mortality over 5 years of follow-up. A subsequent analysis showed the largest decreases were for deaths from “health-care–amenable” conditions such as heart disease, infections, and cancer, which are more plausibly affected by access to medical care.
Medicaid works. Expanding Medicaid works. Republicans are just looking for excuses to put the very healthy bank accounts of the very wealthy over the physical health of low-income people.
The end of Medicaid as we know it? No exaggeration. The Senate version of Trumpcare has worse long-term cuts to Medicaid than the House version, to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121, and give them a piece of your mind. Tell us how it went.
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