A common, and flawed, justification for mandatory medical insurance is that the uninsured drive up the costs of insurance premiums. You know, by using the emergency room for their medical care. Yet, as I’ve noted before, Medicaid patients burden ERs more than the uninsured. Worse yet, Medicaid and Medicare increase insurance premiums. From Bloomberg.com:
Employers and private health insurers pay a “hidden tax” of $88.8 billion each year because government programs fail to pay enough to doctors and hospitals, an industry-sponsored study found.
Inadequate reimbursements by programs such as Medicare and Medicaid increase the annual cost of covering a family of four by $1,788, according to the report, issued today by the actuarial consulting firm Milliman Inc. At hospitals, the payment gap between private and public insurance has more than doubled in 10 years, the Seattle-based firm said.
This is yet more reason to replace Medicaid and Medicare with tax credits or vouchers for private insurance, as discussed here.
The Milliman study is here: Hospital and physician cost shift, by Will Fox and John Pickering.
(via John Goodman)
