"If Medicaid is paying doctors and hospitals less than they need to cover their costs, then someone else has to pay more for those providers to stay in business. That someone is the typical private insurer.....Medicaid patients who are unable to find a doctor end up in the emergency room."
Vendor needs to be paid one rate from all sources (best if only one source). All need equal access to equal quality of health care. There will be so much savings by getting insurance out of our health care that the equalized rates will be fair and adequate thus not a part of our current inequitable system that withholds adequate health care from so many.
Comment from Don McCanne:
"Of course, a Medicaid buy-in would have no resemblance to a Medicaid that covered everyone, just as a Medicare buy-in would not either. Both would leave in place the most expensive and least efficient health care financing infrastructure of all wealthy nations.
Medicaid, as a chronically underfunded program with a welfare stigma, would not be an appropriate model for a single payer system. Neither would Medicare as it is, but it is more suitable as a program that could be redesigned so that it serves all of us well. An IMPROVED Medicare for All would ensure truly universal access to essential healthcare services while being affordable for each of us. With appropriate redesign, financing could be sustained and queues reduced to appropriate levels, obviating the fears of single payer dysfunction that Sally Pipes keeps instilling in us."
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