New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt:
The second theory is that Medicaid is uniquely inferior among health insurance plans, and that is what causes it to be ineffectual. The right-wing has been pursuing this theory for a while, claiming that the low reimbursement rates in Medicaid basically make it inoperative as insurance because providers do not want to take it. The Oregon study shows that is not true because Medicaid recipients did substantially increase their utilization of health care services. But even if we assume it is true, the policy conclusion that springs from it is to change Medicaid so it is not inferior to other health insurance plans. If the argument is that Medicaid, and not other health insurance, is useless because it is X, then make Medicaid be not-X.