The progressive dogma that any growth in Medicaid is a victory — and that any decrease in enrollment a self-evident disaster — is as simplistic as it is fallacious. The ongoing Medicaid unwinding has moved many Americans off the public dole and onto private health insurance.
Anyone who sees this transition as a tragedy and not a triumph has a warped vision of health policy.
Over a three-month period last year, Medicaid enrollment declined by roughly 2 million, a new study in the journal Health Affairs reveals. The sudden contraction was mostly the result of a wind-down of COVID-19-era policies that prevented states from removing people from the program, even if they were not legally entitled to it.
At the time, Democrats portrayed this stark reduction in Medicaid’s rolls as a humanitarian crisis and urged states to delay the unwinding. “I am deeply concerned with the number of people unnecessarily losing coverage,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra told governors in June of last year.
But judging from the new analysis, that crisis never materialized. For the most part, people who left Medicaid got coverage elsewhere.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.
Left’s Medicaid Fixation Harms Patients
Sally C. Pipes
The progressive dogma that any growth in Medicaid is a victory — and that any decrease in enrollment a self-evident disaster — is as simplistic as it is fallacious. The ongoing Medicaid unwinding has moved many Americans off the public dole and onto private health insurance.
Anyone who sees this transition as a tragedy and not a triumph has a warped vision of health policy.
Over a three-month period last year, Medicaid enrollment declined by roughly 2 million, a new study in the journal Health Affairs reveals. The sudden contraction was mostly the result of a wind-down of COVID-19-era policies that prevented states from removing people from the program, even if they were not legally entitled to it.
At the time, Democrats portrayed this stark reduction in Medicaid’s rolls as a humanitarian crisis and urged states to delay the unwinding. “I am deeply concerned with the number of people unnecessarily losing coverage,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra told governors in June of last year.
But judging from the new analysis, that crisis never materialized. For the most part, people who left Medicaid got coverage elsewhere.
Read the entire op-ed in Newsmax.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.