Most Illinois Specialists Won't Take Medicaid Patients

Great post by Megan McArdle. Excerpt:

"Proponents of health care reform are gnashing their teeth, while opponents grimly say "I told you so", at the news of a study from Illinois showing that children in Medicaid/SCHIP have difficulty getting specialists to treat them:

The study used a "secret shopper" technique in which researchers posed as the parent of a sick or injured child and called 273 specialty practices in Cook County, Ill., to schedule appointments. The callers, working from January to May 2010, described problems that were urgent but not emergencies, like diabetes, seizures, uncontrolled asthma, a broken bone or severe depression. If they were asked, they said that primary care doctors or emergency departments had referred them.

Sixty-six percent of those who mentioned Medicaid-CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) were denied appointments, compared with 11 percent who said they had private insurance, according to an article being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In 89 clinics that accepted both kinds of patients, the waiting time for callers who said they had Medicaid was an average of 22 days longer.

Obviously, this has implications for the plans to cut Medicare reimbursements. And for the success of ObamaCare, since most of the coverage expansion will come, not from the exchanges, but from extending Medicaid."