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The other day, a young woman told me about her experience on Medicaid. She was recently divorced and trying to get back on her feet, so she signed up for the state-federal health “insurance” program. What she learned, however, was that Medicaid rules meant she could not travel out of state to visit her mother, could not take a job to start again in the workforce, could not save money, and faced other restrictions that would make sense for a person trying to get ahead. She took two steps back, got off Medicaid, started working and saving, and now says if she knew going into the ordeal how bad Medicaid would be, she would have never signed up.
Some folks would prefer to keep Medicaid an awful program because it discourages participation. Why, though, would advocates for the poor want to expand such an awful program?
In a new paper, Nicole Fisher and I provide background on how bad the program is, how ObamaCare makes it worse, and some of the options still available for North Carolina to reduce or maintain cost. The best option to reduce cost and improve care is to fund private insurance subsidies and personal accounts for recipients with a flexible block grant.
