- Paid more, doctors saw more Medicaid patients, Penn study finds, By Don Sapatkin, January 21, 2015, Philadelphia Inquirer: “For two years, the Obama administration dramatically raised Medicaid reimbursements for primary-care physicians in the hope that they would see more poor patients. The idea was that states would jump in to continue at least part of the payments. Few did, and the experiment ended Dec. 31, before researchers could report evidence of an impact. Now they have…”
- Doctors took on more Medicaid patients when Obamacare boosted their pay, By Tim Darragh, January 22, 2015, NJ.com: “Doctors were much more willing to take on poor and low-income patients when the federal government temporarily boosted Medicaid payments, according to the study published Wednesday. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests the two-year increase in Medicaid reimbursements as scheduled in the Affordable Care Act helped bring health care to more of the poor and low-income people who are enrolled in the program. But the findings leave some concern the access to care problems those enrollees had before the program began will resume again, since New Jersey is among 35 states that let it expire on Dec. 31…”
Tag: Provider shortage
Availability of Medicaid Doctors
- Half of doctors listed as serving Medicaid patients are unavailable, investigation finds, By Robert Pear, December 8, 2014, New York Times: “Large numbers of doctors who are listed as serving Medicaid patients are not available to treat them, federal investigators said in a new report. ‘Half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees,’ the investigators said in the report, which will be issued on Tuesday. Many of the doctors were not accepting new Medicaid patients or could not be found at their last known addresses, according to the report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. The study raises questions about access to care for people gaining Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act…”
- Report: Many U.S. Medicaid doctors often unavailable, By Bill Toland and Kate Giammarise, December 10, 2014, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “A new federal report suggesting a substantial percentage of U.S. doctors who are supposed to see Medicaid patients are unable or unavailable to do so bolsters outgoing Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s claim that Pennsylvania’s working poor could be better served with private health insurance coverage. In a report issued Tuesday, the U.S. Office of the Inspector General found that ‘slightly more than half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees.’ Medicaid enrollees are supposed to select their doctors from a list of providers connected to each Medicaid managed care plan…”
- Doctors face steep Medicaid cuts as fee boost ends, By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar (AP), December 10, 2014, ABC News: “Primary care doctors caring for low-income patients will face steep fee cuts next year as a temporary program in President Barack Obama’s health care law expires. That could squeeze access just when millions of new patients are gaining Medicaid coverage. A study Wednesday from the nonpartisan Urban Institute estimated fee reductions will average about 40 percent nationwide. But they could reach 50 percent or more for primary care doctors in California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois – big states that have all expanded Medicaid under the health law…”
Medicaid Provider Access
Shortage of Medicaid doctors? Not if you ask patients, By Austin Frakt, November 10, 2014, New York Times: “One longstanding concern about Medicaid is that too few doctors will accept it, because it tends to pay providers less generously than private plans do. This concern shows up in news articles about Medicaid, driven by evidence from doctors’ offices. But if you ask Medicaid enrollees directly, they reveal that access to primary care is comparable to that for private plans. A report from the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services released in late September reinforced concerns about access to care for Medicaid enrollees…”