![\"Stethoscope\"](\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/media\/stethoscope_D_20091012174045.jpg\")
The health-care bills passed by both the House and the Senate would both expand Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. One important difference between the bills: The House version would significantly boost Medicaid payments to primary-care docs, while the Senate bill would not.<\/p>\n
This difference — highlighted in this New Republic piece<\/a> — isn’t on the short list<\/a> of things everybody’s talking about as the Senate and House hash out a final bill. But it’s important for people with Medicaid and the doctors who treat them, as well as for the taxpayers who would have to fund higher Medicaid payments.<\/p>\n Medicaid typically pays significantly less than Medicare, which in turn tends to pay less than private insurance. As a result, lots of docs say they lose money when they treat Medicaid patients, and limit the number of Medicaid patients<\/a> in their practice or refuse to take Medicaid altogether. That can make it tough for people with Medicaid to find care.<\/p>\n So on the one hand, the benefits of expanding Medicaid coverage to more people would be significantly diminished if those people couldn’t find a primary care doctor. On the other hand, bringing Medicaid payments for primary care up to parity with Medicare payments for the same services would cost $57 billion over 10 years, according to the CBO<\/a>.<\/p>\n Health Blog Questions of the Day<\/strong>: Should Congress increase Medicaid payments for primary care? If so, where should the money come from?<\/p>\n Image: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n The health-care bills passed by both the House and the Senate would both expand Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. One important difference between the bills: The House version would significantly boost Medicaid payments to primary-care docs, while the Senate bill would not. This difference — highlighted in this New Republic piece — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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