The Tribune’s recent Medicaid series certainly documented plenty of problems with the Medicaid program. But it fell far short when it came to examining solutions.
Almost the entire series focused on patients and doctors who abuse the acute care system and waste taxpayers’ money. Yet buried near the end of the series was the fact that two-thirds of the state Medicaid budget goes for care for the blind, disabled and elderly-meaning nursing homes and long-term care.
Why didn’t the Tribune look at this part of the program, where the real money goes? Could it be because it’s much easier to bash welfare cheats and corrupt doctors than to grapple with the tough issue of how to pay for long-term care for the elderly and disabled?
I searched in vain for some concrete evidence in the series of what portion of Medicaid money is squandered through fraud and abuse. The articles leave the impression that it’s virtually 100 percent. There was little discussion of the millions of people, especially mothers and children, whose health has benefited hugely from the program.
While your writers were craning their brains figuring out how to fix Medicaid, they somehow overlooked the fact that policy-makers already have settled on a solution. Most states are moving rapidly to put the poor in HMOs, where they would get their care through one primary care doctor.
The greatest value of your series was that it showed the grave dangers of maintaining a poor people’s health care program that’s separate from the system for everyone else.
Yet the Tribune editorial page consistently has advocated only minor changes in the overall health care system, which most likely would keep Medicaid patients on the outside. As much as you’d like to save money on poor people’s medicine without reforming the system for more affluent Americans, it can’t be done if the nation really wants decent care for everyone.
